One of the great failings of the 21st century church is the failure to clearly proclaim the gospel.  Many churches and believers instead proclaim moralism and think it is the gospel.  This mistake is quite common in Southern Baptist churches and can be difficult for the average Christian to discern. 

Dr Albert Mohler has an excellent explanation of the difference between the gospel and moralism here.

I read an interesting article in the blogsphere today which asked the question:  Do all religions lead to God?  Really that is somewhat of a trick question.  The writer said that the answer is actually yes, all religions will take you to God.

Listen to the words of John 14:6 where Jesus said: “I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

Other religions will bring you to God.  Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam-they all eventually bring you to God.  Mormonism, Christian Science, paganism, animism, and Roman Catholicism will bring you to God. 

Every practitioner of every religion created by man and/or demon will, by that religion, be brought to God.  But note carefully: none of those religions will bring us to God as Father!  They will bring man to God as Judge. 

They will bring men to stand before the Great White Throne Judgment clothed in the filthy rags of his own righteousness (Isaiah 64:6), without excuse, hopeless, guilty and damned eternally (Matthew 12:36; Acts 17:31; Romans 1:20, 32; 2:16; Revelation 20:11-15), falling continually and infinitely short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

The only way to God as Father is through the Lord Jesus Christ.  Regenerated by His sovereign grace and declared righteous on the basis of His finished work on the cross.

All religions lead to God for damning judgment.  Only through Christ can we come to God as Father.

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.

In recent years there has been a growing trend towards entertainment in the church.  Church buildings are constructed like theaters.  The focus of the building is a stage rather than a pulpit and colored lights and elaborate sound systems are installed. 

In some of these churches multi-million dollar screens and closed circuit television pipe the messages of the “star” pastors to far flung satellite churches in differing locales.  Behind this trend is the notion that the church must sell the gospel to unbelievers.  Churches thus compete for the consumer on the same level as the latest TV reality show or a major motion picture.  More and more churches are relying on marketing strategy to sell the church. 

I have believed for years that Arminian theology is what drives this approach.  If one views conversion as fundamentally dependent on an act of the human will then any method is good if it works.

This whole plan for “doing church” presumes that church services are primarily for the purpose of recruiting unbelievers.  But in the New Testament church services are primarily for believers to worship God in spirit and in truth. 

Acts 2:42 tells us the pattern the early church followed in their assemblies:  “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Note that the early church’s priorities clearly were to worship God and to edify the brethren.  The church came together for worship and edification; it scattered to evangelize the world.

In Matthew 28:19-20 the Lord Jesus Christ commissioned His disciples to “go into all the world proclaiming the gospel” not to wait for them to come to the church building.

At North Athens Baptist Church it is my desire that everyone feel welcome to meet with us, but unbelievers ought to be a bit uncomfortable.  The reason for this is because our services are primarily designed to worship God by the word and the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.  These are things that the unbeliever has no frame of reference for until God regenerates them through our gospel witness and the converting power of the Holy Spirit.

Of all the truths of the Christian faith perhaps the one that 21^st century men find most distasteful is the exclusivity of Jesus Christ in salvation.  The great cry of our day is for tolerance and pluralism and this cry is being heard in the church as well as in secular society. 

Evangelicals maintain that salvation is to be found in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.  There are not many roads to heaven there is only one, Jesus Christ.  Men will laud our theology so long as we do not claim that Christ alone can provide the forgiveness of sin and righteousness that God demands for entrance into eternal life.  Yet, the Bible makes it abundantly clear that there is no salvation for anyone outside of Jesus. 

Acts 4:12 states unequivocally: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”  The apostles were merely echoing the words of Jesus Himself for He taught them in John 14:6 that he is the only way to the Father and so the only way to heaven and eternal life. 

If this truth is compromised then we are on a slippery slope that eventually leads to a loss of the gospel itself.  Dr Albert Mohler has written an article that speaks about this issue and of the continued health of the evangelical church.  It is interesting reading and can be found here.

The recent death of Michael Jackson has once again focused attention on the celebrity worship that is rampant in America and indeed, the world.  We are a culture that is infatuated with fame and the cult of celebrity has become a virtual religion whose congregants really worship themselves by giving their praise and adoration to the rich and famous that they wish to copy. 

 Years ago Andy Warhol famously prophesied that “…in the future everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes.”  It seems that there is no price that people will not pay, no humiliation that they will not endure in order to achieve their fifteen minutes.  The sin of idolatry is at the heart of this cult.  Idolatry occurs when men and women love something else more than they love God (Mark 12:30-31; Revelation 2:4-5) when they serve something other than Him (1 Thess 1:9); when He is not the object of their praise (Deut 6:14). 

Paul makes it clear in the Book of Romans, chapter 1 that when men and women will not worship God they naturally worship something else (Romans 1:25).  When the worship of God is absent men substitute the worship of something or someone He has created.  But the sad truth is that none of these counterfeits will ever fill the emptiness of the human soul that was made for God and can only find true satisfaction when people worship Him in spirit and in truth.