The purpose driven church works on the opposite tenets. It turns the church into a business. It turns the pastor into a CEO. It turns the congregants into customers. It relies on carnal metrics to measure success. Let's deal with some of this today. First of all the church is not supposed to be a business. It is not meant to be focus grouped. It is not meant to have marketing schemes developed for it. Possibly because to the unsaved individual the things of God are still utter foolishness. The Gospel is not meant to unite people. It was meant to divide and offend. Jesus came to bring a sword but most seeker friendly pastors turn that sword into a giant lollipop He just wants to share with everyone. You must realize that because the Gospel is the power of God unto the salvation of men it also has the power to drive people away. People do not want to hear they are a worthless sinner. They do not want to hear that they have to be obedient. They do not want to hear that they are not God. These are the things the Gospel has to offer them and the problem is that you cannot market that. You cannot sell it. So you tone it down. Maybe you do not mention sin and repentance. You sweeten it up. Maybe you only talk about how much God loves us and how we all have some glorious purpose. You no longer actually represent the true Gospel. The result is that you are now targeting goats instead of sheep. But goats are not going to worship God! So instead of worship we will entertain them. Dazzling light shows. Dramatic smoke machines. Countdowns to service. Secular music during worship time.
Because the real Gospel will cut a sinner to shreds we have to take the edge off. We spoke last time about Bill Hybels removing all crosses from his church because the goats found them offensive. We mentioned Perry Noble changing the Ten Commandments. We spoke before about Rick Warren advising to not preach the Gospel at Easter so you give your visitors a reason to come back to your church. All despicable schemes of the devil and running rampant in our churches today. That is why the majority of preachers today no longer exposit the Word to hear from God. Instead they engage in proof texting so they can prop up the pre-decided topic they wanted to speak about. Those topics range from the outright silly to simply unbiblical. During the summer time, many mega-churches do a series on the popular summer blockbuster movies. Sure they toss a little Jesus into the mix but they are essentially expositing James Bond or Han Solo.
When you think that you as a pastor are responsible for the horizontal growth of your church then you have left the Bible. In order to fill God's role, you must get even farther away from the Bible. I saw one church this week giving away large screen TV's for Father's Day for example. Other churches have had gun giveaways. One church transformed the sanctuary into a rodeo and another into a motocross field. There was a clown service where everyone dressed up as clowns. Hillsong recently turned Silent Night into a burlesque number. At two different Women's conferences this year they had a pastor dressed as Austin Powers and another as the Naked Cowboy. This is what you are forced to do to draw goats to church. This is what happens when the unsaved become the unchurched. Because today's deep theology is this:
The church was not meant for the lost; it was meant for the saved.
I know this flies in the face of a lot of modern churches and the schemes they utilize for growth but this is what the key verses teach us. We have often heard the old adage that the church was not meant as a museum for the saints but rather an emergency room for sinners. While that may sound good on a tweet it is not biblical. The church is meant to be a community for the saved. A place where they can study the Scriptures and grow in Christ. A place where they can have everything in common with one another and be held accountable. Do we want the unsaved to come to church? Absolutely! Where else are they going to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is the only power of God unto their very salvation! That is the model! They come to church because they have seen how we have behaved as Christians and want what we have. They may not understand worship but they see the sincerity of the saved around them and they wonder about this God they clearly love so deeply. They hear the Word of God exposited correctly which means every verse always comes back to Jesus Christ. Every anecdote always comes back to the cross. They hear over and over again about Calvary. About their sins. About their need to repent. They will be drawn by the Holy Spirit. Most will not accept it. Such is the nature of man in rebellion to God. Some however will come to salvation and all of heaven will rejoice for that one wayward sheep that comes home. Remember that narrow is the way that leads to eternal life and few are those who find it. The mega church mentality has flipped everything on its ear. Suddenly if you lead a flock of 200 and they are all growing in the Lord and genuinely converted you are considered a failure even though you have stayed true to the Gospel. If you lead a church of 2000, where people are constantly being recycled and no one matures, you are considered a success. These are worldly measurements beloved not godly. The fact that 50,000 people come to hear Joel Osteen preach each week is not a sign of favor from God but rather favor from this world.
The other consideration is that when all of your marketing and preaching is aimed at goats then you end up starving the sheep. The sheep of the Lord know His voice beloved. They also know when they are not hearing His voice. When they continually are denied the spiritual nourishment that can only come from the true Gospel the only result can be spiritual atrophy. So many sheep are leaving the church today because they are simply starved out by the purpose driven pastors. Mega church heretic Andy Stanley said just this year that people who attend small churches are just selfish. That is was not all about them. Sorry Andy but it is about them to Jesus. He did not die so they might have life in mediocrity from a spiritual perspective. Go back to the key verses again! The pastor is responsible for the vertical growth of the sheep but the purpose driven paradigm shifts the focus to the horizontal growth of the church. You cannot be focused on both and according to God you do not have to be. You can shepherd the sheep entrusted to you and let God worry about who gets added to the number.
Beloved these are very dangerous considerations. The purpose driven churches in America, which comprise the vast majority of churches overall, have flipped the Gospel upside down. Instead of being unsaved people are considered unchurched. The unspoken goal is no longer to bring them to the cross but instead to the church building. Heck many of these buildings do not even have crosses! When the shift of focus within the church is towards the goats instead of the sheep the result is twofold. First you are forced to abandon the Gospel to draw the lost. You are forced to compromise the actual Gospel. No more talk about sin, the blood, the cross or the need to repent. Those are all seeker-unfriendly. Instead focus on material and temporal needs like improving marriages, finding significance, and improving self-esteem. Heck, take that even further and preach absolute nonsense about the hottest movie out today or dress like your favorite Disney character. Change worship into a concert. Get the best voices and musicians. Dim the lights and turn on the disco balls. Bring some secular music into worship time. Anything to entertain. Anything to make the "experience" worth coming back for. On the flip side, you will end up starving the very people God as entrusted to you. The true sheep of the Lord will not tolerate such unbiblical nonsense. Eventually they will walk out of the sheep pen and wander the Christian landscape as the church hurt people we see growing in numbers every single day. Purposefully driven away.
Reverend Anthony Wade -- June 22, 2016
