Recently I have seen many articles and questions about how churches are failing. Not long ago I saw somewhere that 80 percent of the churches in America are failing and that 4,000 churches close every year. An article on Patheos.com states that 3,500 people leave the church every single day.
Select churches are growing. Unfortunately, many of these churches are merely preaching to keep the people happy or are preaching secondhand theology, meaning they learned it from family members or traditions which that particular church subscribes to. The “pastor” relays the flawed and/or temporal theology. Too many pulpits today are occupied by favored family members of the church or by people who look good on a résumé. They speak well but are not anointed by God to be pastor of that church.
A man called by God to be the pastor proclaims the Word of God with boldness and clarity, is kingdom-focused and Christ-centered, and is driven by the Holy Spirit. And we wonder why the Lord has removed His blessing from America, why children are growing up to be the way they are, and why our culture emulates and even surpasses the iniquities and transgressions of cities and kingdoms that have fallen — like Sodom and Gomorrah, and Rome.
If the church is vanishing, whose fault is it? Allow me to answer that question with Scripture. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). The truth is that Christ never changes, and the promises of God are as strong today as they were at the foundation of the world. What we are really looking at is Christianity vs. CHRISTianity. Romans 1:24 states: “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.” I really like the way Eugene Peterson puts it in his paraphrase: “But my people didn’t listen, Israel paid no attention; so I let go of the reins and told them, ‘Run! Do it your own way!’ ”
Too many people want things their own way; they want to live according to the God of their own heart. Unfortunately, the God in their heart is not the same as the God of the Bible. In churches today, we see deacons who drink themselves drunk, who know the Word of God but live lives that in no way resemble that of what a deacon should be. We see people in the choir who live a life of sin and yet are allowed to remain because they sing well. We see pastors who do ungodly things and cover it up with a smile and a perky sermon. We see congregations who appear to be godly people, but when they are done worshipping and jumping up and down, their walk is as crooked as a snake.
Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was prophesying about you when he said, ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. Their worship is a farce, for they replace God’s commands with their own man-made teachings’ ” (Mark 7:6-7).
“Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place — unless you repent” (Revelation 2:5). If we desire to see renewal and revival in the church, we ourselves must first seek renewal and restoration within ourselves through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Kent Jenkins
Myrtle Beach, S.C.