This weekend I was invited to speak at a supporting church. I arrived on Wednesday and just got home today. They recently had a kind of church split and lost about half their congregation—the younger half. They currently have an average attendance of about 150. They wanted me to help them with contextualization and outreach.
They kept me very busy. I spent a lot of time talking to the pastor, getting to know him, and encouraging him. I helped the session briefly with personality since they had recently taken the MBTI indicator. I sat in on a session meeting to see what it was like. I spoke to the elders and deacons for about 6 hours during a retreat. I spoke to a research team the pastor had put together to get to know their context better. I spoke with various individuals of the church. I taught the adult Sunday School class and preached on Sunday.
I did address their contextualization concerns, but I framed my comments on contextualization with the work of Christ applied to the church through the Spirit. I told them that in my view, many churches I visit are suffering from a kind of collective unbelief that has settled over the church and its ministry designs and implementation. The result is that, while the flame of faith has not gone out completely in these churches, and while there are usually many godly people within them, the ministry systems reveal that their faith is not clearly evident in what they do as a church.
I contrasted the great promises about the growth of the kingdom through the work of Christ and the Spirit with the general feel you get in many churches that people don’t really expect much to happen. I said that God will indeed fulfill his promises as his people put their faith to work. I added that if we don’t put our faith to work, the Lord may pass over us and use some other group in his church to accomplish his purposes. I gave examples of this unbelief as it affects such ministry systems as (1) preaching, (2) making contacts, (3) evangelism, (4) prayer, (5) teaching/discipleship, and (6) leadership.
Every time I spoke the response was a clearly expressed conviction, repentance and renewed desire to put their faith to work. I saw this response in the pastor, the elders, the deacons, the research committee, and the people of the church in general. After the morning service the pastor asked people to come forward if they felt the need to repent of unbelief and that he would pray for them, and quite a few people came forward.
I was very encouraged to see the Lord at work in this congregation, and it gave me greater hope that the Lord has plans to reinvigorate his church in the US. I hope for another great awakening.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
AMen!
You’re a modern day Paul! I’m happy they were so receptive and eager to have a godly church.
Oh, yes! Thank you for sharing this most encouraging piece of news! It makes me want to reevaluate things and see where unbelief is in the context in which I am (not to mention in my own life). God is on the move!
Wow! How exciting. It makes me want to reevaluate my life, too.
That’s very encouraging! Thanks for sharing.
What an intensive time, and what a ministry opportunity God led you to. It is an awesome thing for a church to open itself up like that. I think it would be a blessing we as individuals and churches did so.
Woody
Thank you for sharing that. We as individuals and as the church need this great awakening.
We have been praying weekly as a family that God’s Spirit would work in the hearts of believers (and unbelievers) to cause a revival in our country. I have the opportunity from time to time to talk to family members and customers alike about their churches, from presbyterians to methodists to episcopals and they are all experiencing the same problems of poor attendance, divisions between the old and young generations, and a lack of interest in outreach. I have had to confess to the Lord my own lack of faith in believing that God would work in a persons heart after talking to them about my hope in Jesus even as I would be saying the words. I also see in general a befriending of our American culture by the people of God, imitating behaviour and reasoning which goes against God’s law. Is that a fault of church leadership to teach holiness, a lack of personal devotion to God’s word by households? God’s law is the way to life, loving our neighbor, and imitating the beauty of our Saviour. Wouldn’t one of the blessings of greater obedience to Gods word (in faith) be a clear and energized conscience to evangelize? It’s encouraging to hear about your work to build up the church, Gary.
I am afraid that I am too old to understand the word contextualization. Dad
Contextualization is applying the Word of God skillfully to a specific situation or context. It’s 12 syllables shorter to say “contextualization.” On the other hand, it’s 3 syllables longer than “application.” 🙂
Adam,
I enjoyed your comments, especially “a befriending of our American culture by the people of God, imitating behavior…”. I have often suggested that the church should be “influencing” culture rather than “reflecting” culture. I find this is rarely the case. Even where I have seen bold pastors proclaim this from the pulpit, there are some instances where the congregants ignore the admonishment.
How difficult to see a church struggle and yet what a blessing to see the Lord use it to bring repentance and faith. I am glad you had this opportunity and that the Lord is using you in this way.
Adam, I have a number of articles on my mission website (garywaldecker.net) about the need for revival and what to do about it, in case you are interested.
Thanks Gary, I will check those out.
If you are interested you can see the pastor’s further comments here:
http://tnpc.org/notes-from-our-pastor/a-dangerous-sleep.html
Gary I read your articles “the individual and the community” and “the eclipse of Christ in the mission of the church” this evening. They seem to be relevant to what we are experiencing in our church in a decision turned debate about whether or not to continue with a contemporary model of youth group. The session has a job opening/description posted for anyone to answer and the parents of the teens in the church who are unhappy with how the last six years have turned out are asking for something family oriented. My family is new to this church and I saw that something was amiss right away. I let my older sons attend their age groups’ sunday school but not the youth group. I wrote a letter to the session recently explaining my conviction that families should be able to have bible studies with their older kids. I believe this is supported biblically more than the current youth group model of isolating the teens to there own activities. Anyway, there is a christian education committee assigned to this as well. I found it telling that they would meet about the “youth” without talking to the parents directly as to how they may want to be involved. It is easy when employing a business model in church organizations to look at the assumed need to lead the youth with their own pastor or the solution to that problem as being a position to fill without truly discipling families to whom those young people belong. The committees’ goal is to meet to connect the ends instead of the elders coming along side the dads and encouraging them to lead their families in worship -if the concern really is for the younger generation or the future of the church. What I have been observing seems to fit very well into your pointing out that Christ can be eclipsed and that we are not thinking as Christians. This also reminds me of a recent sermon by my Dad on Psalm 119 called “Gospel Equilibrium”. The sermon points out how we can achieving that right thinking and application of wisdom that comes from loving God’s law. There does seem to be a communitarian bypass of the family when the youth leaders assume leadership over the youth (who are individuals first and foremost under their parent’s charge) in our church. I agree that we are too afraid of being unloving to critique anything, especially if we were to point out when we are acting like the secular culture. Please pray for God’s enabling us to speak the truth in love.
Hey, what a list of articles! Looks like I have a lot of reading to do.
I’ll pray about what to do in your church, Adam. I’m glad you are taking it seriously. It’s encouraging!