Whatever an individual church might be....wherever it is....mid-America.....the South.....the North....the West....here in the East....the congregation is already in place. It may be 100 members or 6,000. That is what the pastor has as his responsibility at the present time. Oh they have goals. They desire visitors. The 100 member church may have the goal of 300. The 500 member church may envision thousands. The pastor wants to keep his job. He has to meet some kind of expectations. Although others have the itch to move on. They are frustrated and are looking for a better opportunity. It happens all the time.
The sermon title for tomorrow is already printed up in the bulletin and probably on the church website. Pastors are probably at a picnic of some kind today. As for the members....the people....the sheep....they are probably fat and healthy....maybe they are at the pickleball court trying to be muscle-toned healthy. Spiritually is another story. Their faces are gaunt....muscles atrophied....their gate slow and halting....if they are old enough....forty or above....(spiritual years that is....since they were born the second time)....their memory of the early days is long gone. They really can't even remember Billy Graham or David Wilkerson or even Pat Robertson.
There are no Christian bookstores anymore....(oh there are a few but essentially the concept is long gone.) We do it differently today.....evangelizing and discipling. Yesterday I took a long-time Christian friend to Barnes & Noble....this is relatively new to him....he had a gift certificate present to use. He browsed the Religion section for a long time. He may have went over every book title....and finally picked up an older David Jeremiah book. As we were walking to the car he commented on how there was practically nothing of any substance in those hundreds of books. It's been that way for a long time!
Oh do I remember some of those Christian bookstores from the eighties....Grand Book And Bible in Lawrence County....or Logos in Beaver County....or Family Christian Store in Butler County. Anybody could walk in and browse....and there might be fifty....(maybe more)....quality books of one sort of another....to 'pick up and read'....tolle lege....a Latin phrase that many of us knew what it means back then....because it was a different era. We had multiple choices before us of books to read....classics and doctrine and biographies and critiques on evangelicalism and the Christian mind. That is mostly all gone. We don't even know what is out there anymore....with the exception of the latest Jonathan Cahn or Eric Metaxas or David Jeremiah book that Barnes & Noble will carry....because carrying them makes a profit. On that Logos bookstore that I mentioned above. I had a conversation with the owner one day. He was forlorn....it was just before he closed.....he said that he spent forty minutes with a customer describing the various Study Bibles....and then the customer said that he could get one cheaper on the Internet. We had a bookstore ourselves.... just before 9/11....a very good one if I say so myself....two professors at a Christian college encouraged us and bought a lot of books and prayed for the effort....and there were a few others....but the motivation in the church was no longer evangelism....as everything had turned inward. It was all about us....our future....our family. We started to become our own idols!
The evangelical community today is very informed on politics and socialism and wokism....things like that....but woefully uniformed or misinformed on the gospel of Jesus Christ itself. The holiness of God is gone....doctrine is gone....and spiritual warfare is gone....church history is absent. Spurgeon who? Martyn Lloyd who? We don't even see the need to be born again anymore. We would have a hard time even describing it. As for preaching....today it is meant solely to bring more members form the community into the church. Saving souls is somewhere in the background if it even exists at all. The glory of God has long since departed from the pulpit in America.....with of course some exceptions.
John MacArthur....John Piper....my pastor.....and many others....have not been changed in this paradigm shift in the church....but percentage-wise....the above paragraph describes the church in America today.
So tomorrow is yet another.....Lord's Day....an opportunity for pastors to plead for mercies from God. Physically they are the ones that should be gaunt...with muscles atrophied....and walking at a slow and halting gate....after so many hours.....mornings and evenings on their knees....head resting on praying hands....sweat and even tears on their cheeks....this over so many months and years if not decades.
May God....if it be His will....if this be His perfect timing...may He have mercy upon these sleeping shepherds....and thereby have mercy upon us sleeping in the pews. May He awaken us all....in extreme humility for our having dallied so long in Vanity Fair. May the Holy Spirit descend upon many of the pulpits once again.....just as in days past. May our Lord and our Savior and our coming King be to whom we look to for respite....and calmness.....and trust.....and patience.....and hope! And may all of this be to His glory alone! May we exist for His glory alone! May our hope be in His glory alone! For if it is....if we eschew our trust in princes and power....and look to Him who holds all of creation in his hands....then will we be at peace as the storm intensifies.
