"Do not give to dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls before pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces."
Matthew 8:3 (New International Version)
All one has to do is step inside a church on Sunday morning and one will hear about the ongoing war between the Christian faith and the popular secdular culture. Since I have left the active ministry, I have spent the last 8 years visiting protestant churches of every denomination and theological temperment. They have all had didfferent worship styles--organs to amplified rock music, different belief emphases, and all sorts of different architicture. I have sat in cathedrals, naves and in the newer style auditorium churches. One thing that has been a given whether or not it was a town, country, urban or suburban church...mega, large, medium or small...is that for some reason people feel the church is losing the battle against the culture around it.
One could see it in worship bulletins, financial statements and even a potluck dinners. It wasn't openly talked about in many of the churches, but when it was it was through talk of the good old nostalgic days. I would hear things like, "Back in the day when the church was full we used to have to set up extra chairs...or..."There was a time when we didn't have enough Sunday school class rooms and had to have classes in the church kitchen." Mainly, people saw the church as the great central gathering place of the community where almost any need could be met.
But ,these same folk, most of whom are in their golden years, always seen to be talking about the church in the past tense. They say they yearn for the good old days when offering plates heaped with envelopes and pews were full. They long again for a time when the church can again become the center of town life.
But if you study the numbers of churches going back to the 1940's and 1950's, when most believed the church was at its strongest point in a genereration one will see only about a 10% drop off in attendance and membership. It is also clear to see that it was during these golden years when many of these cultural issues we are fighting today began to rear their ugly head.
But in today's church it seems much, much worse. It seems like things like tithing, attendance, membership, conversion and professions of faith are off by a lot more than 10 %. The pews seem emptier, the offerings less and the hand-wringing by leaders over the future survival of their congregations is greater than ever before. Even the United Methodist Church in some publications has suggested that if current trends continue some 35% of churches will end up closing. The church and the culture are at war and to many involved it seems like the culture is winning.
We need to go back to the beginning to places like the garden of Eden and Jesus' temptation in the wilderness to get a feel for the psychological aspects of the issue. Ever since the serpent (Satan) convinced Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, Satan has been a huge part of the ongoing cultural warfare. When Jesus was even allowed to be put to the test for 40 days in the wilderness it was Satan who made the arguments for going the way of the culture and not the way of God. In the book of Job, Satan is given free reign to tempt, test and torture Job and His friends to see if they would reject and curse God.
But an important message was being sent. Satan was being given the opportunity, power and authority on earth to deceive us into bad situations and decisions. We would be faced with a choice...the prince of this world...or the prince of peace. In the movie, "The Devil's Advocate" Al Pacino plays Satan as never seen before. He has started a huge law firm where he is the senior partner. The law firm puts him and his minions into play in almost every area of the culture: crime, business, civil suits and internatiional relations. It puts him into a position to encourage and nurture every sin known to mankind. He views his lawayers as priests and plans to claim the world for himself. God can have the heavenly realms while they take to the streets where they can have evil influence upon people's lives, persuading and misleading as many as possible.
Our cultural war is spiritual warfare: God versus evil. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12 NIV)."
Now does this mean that the church should give up on the culture and trying to influence it? Of course not. But maybe we should change the way in which we fight this culture. We are so reactive to everything that the culture is doing. It seems like the church is spending much of its time, resources and treasure to look, sound and make people feel that this distance between church and culture is not that great. We've bought into the approach that to bring people to Christ, we have to keep them in their cultural comfort zone so they will not be put off by the exclusivity of the Christian messaqe.
But this is failing beccause we live in culture of relativism where people are conditioned to believe that one belief is just as valuable as another. One persons' Christ is another's Buddha. We've allowed people to become cafeteria Christians who can pick and choose the parts of the message that are appealing and leave behind the parts that are judgemental and challenging.
Another problem with our approach to reacching the culture is that we assume that people have a moral center from which a sound and complete decision for Christ can be made. But morality is also relative and our culture is constantly chiding us for having judgements of any kind about behavior, lifestyle, sexuality and politics. The schools teach our children open-mindedness so they come out of school immune to what is destructive behavior and broken living.
So we look out into our churches and see half-empty pews, half-hearted participation and apathy and we become depressed. We as churches think we are failing and losing grounde to the culture in our strivings to be relevant, intellectual, non-judgemental and open minded. We are trying to appeal to the world and it doesn't seem to be working. But we keep trying to do church from a cultural standpoint.
Jesus gave us the great commission to take the gospel to all the ends of the earth, he didn't give us the great compromise. That is why he told us not to throw our pearls before swine. Maybe we need to keep the best of what we have away from the culture. Maybe if the world sees an alternative or opposite way of living where people seemed fulfilled, purposweful and loving they will then want to check us out to see what we have to offer. But we have to use our pearls to streagthen the faith and life of our own congregations before this can happen.
Here are four things churches can do to keep their pearls for use inside their own walls.
1. Foster greater Biblical literacy - How can we share the message when many in our pews are not sure what the revealed truth of God says? Bible study, Bible Study, Bible study.
2. Increase the maturity of our members by demanding they live lives in accorance with the faith. The church should be helping strengthen families, marriages, parenting and relationships. They will know we are Christians by the way we love one another. When non-believers see this being lived out, they often want it for themselves. That gets a foot into the door. But this cannot be done by programming. It is done one person at a time as Christians encounter people in the world around them.
3. Offer structure and accountability. People whose lives are messed up usually do not have support systems around them that provide sound advice and relational help. We need to reinforce Christian life style in our pews before we push it in the culture. People often compliment Anne and I on how well-behaved and cooperative our boys are. I always tell them the same thing. We put God first in our house and believe every good thing will follow.
4. Live our faith. We need to pray, study, worship and pratice our faith every day. We need to re-committ our lives to Jesus everyday. We need to be in church on Sundays, get our kids to youth group and work torwards tithing. The stronger we become the less effect the culture will have on us.
So, the church must keep more of what it has and put it to work helping those that are already in our pews live stronger, more mature Christian lives in the world. We beat the culture only by becoming an alternative to it. Satan is on the loose and we need every weapon we can muster to fight off the deceptions and destructive aspects of our world.
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