I'm not a baseball fan anymore....but I know what it was like. I remember Mazeroski's home run. That was 1960. They made a big deal of it in Pittsburgh at the time....that the Pirates had not been in a World Series since 1927....33 years! The Pirates won the series again in 1971 and 1979....and I remember both....but it will be 46 years this year since their last World Series appearance! I did about fifteen minutes of research and found that the Pirates finished in last place....19 times since 1979....and 33 out of those 46 years in the second half of their division.
Evangelicalism's last hurrah was probably in the 1990s somewhere....after about twenty years of almost revival....and even flirting with reformation. There have been a lot of last place finishes....so to speak....in the past thirty years....and the last ten years straight since Trump took over the team!Baseball has a number of different areas to it....hitting and pitching and defense and speed for example. To use a few baseball metaphors....we have had some great pitchers...(preachers)....in evangelicalism....R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur and Billy Graham and Tim Keller and David Wilkerson just to name a few....so we always had a chance....but that pitching staff has been depleted. This is therefore a very weak age for preaching in evangelical churches in America! If you are under 40....you probably have never heard the gospel preached....as it can be preached....and unless you came across R. C. Sproul's tapes or CDs....probably only have a vague idea of the holiness of God....and unless you have read MacArthur or listened regularly to his radio ministry....you have probably never had a wicket gate or a straight and narrow path or the City of Destruction explained to you.
I have a nephew playing minor league baseball right now. The team that he is on has a 350 batting average. Everybody's hitting....but it has a team ERA of 7.4! The whole league is like that. Well that's what we are like in the church. Everybody is out there getting on base....and filling the stadium....(sanctuary)....but there is no preaching. There's no coaching. Everyone is on their own....grab a bat and swing away. It's not just that the glory days are gone....but the glory is gone from the sanctuary.
The church is hurting....has gone its own way....getting beat-up by politics....and God has judged it severely! Just one more sport metaphor. Sometimes the team has to start over. The letter to the church in Ephesus was kind of like that...."I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent....and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place." Revelation 2:3-6 ESV
