The Church (Part 1)

As I start begin this series of articles, I would like to start with a topic that is near and dear to my heart: the local church. This is the first of three articles addressing what I believe is central to the church being what God intended it to be.

I have been a born again Christian since 1985 and have been in the ministry of some sort or another for twenty years. I am a Southern Baptist by choice. I state this candidly because I did not grow up in church. At my conversion, I knew nothing about denominations and therefore visited many different churches in those first fledgling months of my New Life. In that short time, I came to realize that I was looking for a place where I could grow and serve. The Lord led me to a Baptist (though not Sothern Baptist) church. As a young believer, I loved the church. It had very strict rules about what was acceptable in the life of a Christian and what was not. This legalism suited me fine because I had just finished a four year stint in the United States Marine Corps. Following the rules, laws if you will, was easy for me even if I didn’t understand them, or agree with them. As you might be able to predict, I was only at that church for a little more than a year. The Lord had ulterior motives for leading me to this church. It just happened to be where I met and married my Sweetheart, Dana. That would have been enough, but God also used that first church to teach me an important element in the life of any church; the Bible.

I know that it might not sound profound to say that the local church has to be focused on preaching and teaching the Bible; but it is. The Bible is not only the substance that we teach, but it is the instruction for our conduct in and as a church. This means that we cannot be a biblical church if we do not do things the way that the Bible teaches. The specifics of church membership and church leadership will be the focus of the next two articles. The use of the Bible is vital. There are two ways in which local congregations fall short of the standard of being a body that honors the Bible.

The first is that local bodies ignore the Bible for all intents and purposes. Now if they were asked if they are “People of the Book,” they would answer with a conviction, “absolutely!” But look a little deeper at the preaching and teaching style. What does style have to do with it? A lot if you want to honor the Word of God. When I was a fledgling Youth Pastor, I began to ask other Youth Pastors and read books on how reach teenagers with the Gospel. I was told from numerous sources that you can’t really teach the Bible to teens. “The best strategy is to keep them busy and then you can slip a biblical application or principle in at the end.” Is it any wonder our kids are leaving the church as soon as they get out of high school? I began and continued my tenure as a Youth Pastor by saying “Ok guys open your Bibles to …” We do not have to hide or apologize for the Bible. It is our foundation. This is not just a problem in youth ministry. It seeps into all of our ministries. We try to be evangelistic without the Word, to disciple people without the Word, and even to preach without the Word. “No way!” you say. “We would not be Baptists without preaching the Word.” I am not so concerned with being Baptist as I am with being right. Recently, my college aged son was visiting a large and popular church in the Dallas – Fort Worth area. He took notes on the sermon. The pastor is widely accepted as a great preacher. In this sermon, which I assume is indicative of his preaching style, he had three points. They were something like this:

· You are made in God’s image – taken from Genesis

· Jesus died for you – taken from Matthew

· We should live for him – taken from Hebrews

Each of these points is good. Each of these points even has a biblical foundation. So what is the problem?

I asked my son, “Where do you go from there? How do you duplicate such a study? Who or what is the authority here?”

He replied, “I don’t know where to go from here. That depends on the preacher.” Exactly! Such preaching creates a dependence upon the preacher. It does not honor God’s Word. God’s Word becomes a tool that the preacher uses to say what he wanted to say in the first place. Are we really surprised then that our churches have become personality cults rather than centers of spiritual growth? Expository preaching, on the other hand, honors the Word of God. It is preaching that focuses on the Word. The most important question the preacher asks as he is preparing his sermon is, “What is the text saying and how can I communicate that message to the people of God?” The great evangelical pastor Martin Lloyd-Jones states that if it isn’t expository then it isn’t preaching at all. Mark Dever asserts that expository preaching is one of the nine marks of a healthy church. Despite anecdotal evidence, churches that practice expository preaching grow faster than other churches. This is more than my personal preference of mine. It is an issue that is central to the church being the church. This means that the preacher has to actually study the Word and discover what God is saying through it. Pardon my sarcasm. This is a major problem with the church. It starts with the Pastor. There is no way that the church will be people of the Word until their Pastor is a man of the Word.

The second way that churches fall short of honoring the Word of God is by adding to it. “We would never do that. We go strictly by the book.” Really? What about when something changes in your church. I once had a “Christian” literally get in my face because our church started singing modern day choruses in our worship.

“It’s not right. If it’s not in the hymnal then we should not sing it. Guitars and drums cannot be used to honor God,” were a few of his very angry retorts.

I simply handed him my Bible and said, “show me where all that is in here. If you do, I will change our worship style today.”

Of course he could not because it is not in there. In fact, he didn’t care whether it was in the Bible or not. He “knew” what God meant to say even if He never said it. It’s not just music. Recently I heard a very godly woman complain about a young woman who wore shorts to church. When asked what the problem was, she could not really come up with an answer. Everyone knows that you don’t wear shorts to church right? I wonder if Paul wore a tie or if Peter had shined shoes. I wonder if Tabitha would have been accepted because of her fashion sense. It goes beyond that. What about other areas about which we feel strongly? Does it say in the Bible that worship only occurs for an hour or that Sunday School has to occur the hour before worship? Does it say that you have to take an offering or that you have to sing three songs? None of these things are in the Scriptures and yet many people hold on to them like they are. Trust me. Just try changing them in an established church.

While I do not discount the importance of church history, I do not hold it on the same level as Scripture. If we are going to be people of the Book, let’s be people of the Book! That means that we have to study it, teach it, memorize it, and live by it. Are we willing to submit to what it says and not add our own personal preferences? Until we are, we will never be the church that God wants us to be.