The Biggest Sin in Your Church
A recent post by Ed Stetzer. Here are two paragraphs from it:
If I preach about gay marriage, everybody cheers. If I preach about sin you can hear the amens ring. But those aren’t the real problems. I tell people that the biggest sin in our church is you sitting there doing nothing and still calling yourself a follower of Jesus.
…
The elephant in the evangelical room is that we’re not making disciples. People are still struggling through how to do that. We studied 2,500 Protestant church attendees and did so again a year later and the spiritual development was shocking and frustrating.
HT: Ekklesia 521
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I don’t know about the people who are sitting in the pew doing nothing because almost everyone I know who is a Christian is doing something.
There may be some truth to what Ed Stetzer is saying on the one hand (and I only know of him what you just wrote in this post), but on the other hand I get tired of authors ranting about how the church has failed and doesn’t do anything but judge people and build buildings. Since I became a Christian 25 or so years ago, I have heard of countless people–Corrie ten Boom, Franklin Graham, David Brainerd, David Wilkerson, and countless others too numerous to name here–who risked their lives taking the Gospel to people AND caring for their physical, emotional and spiritual hurts. I have always been in missions minded churches that are active in their communities and around the world.
Churches have led the way in taking care of widows, orphans, victims of natural disaster, the poor, and other hurting people since the time of the Apostles. And when some strayed away into the Crusades and slave trade and things like that, there were those in the church who spoke up to stop those things.
Christian leaders should not be accusers (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/notes/denny-burk/dietrich-bonhoeffer-on-pastoral-complaints/278831639380).
But they should follow the example of Paul in 1 Thessalonians, urging people to do more of the good they are already doing.
Most of us are well aware of the suffering that still remains even though so many work so hard to alleviate it, and we are usually well aware of how much we are still not like Jesus, and how many still are not saved (about 4 billion out of about 6 billion).
I think of Richard Wurmbrand’s account of his time in a Romanian concentration camp in his book Tortured For Christ. How he lamented to God that he had not done MORE to spread the Gospel. When I read that, I thought, how can he say that? He’s a full time pastor, and on top of that, he’s trying to do that in a communist country where it is illegal to do so. He probably does more than anyone to spread the Gospel and help people, yet he feels he has done little! Did the Lord chide him for not making more disciples? No, the Lord encouraged him.
I’m sure that studies have their place. But it seems more important to keep looking at God’s Word and be faithful to what it says to do and to trust God to bring about what he said he would. Studies and statistics can be deceiving. Faithful pastors may have produced more disciples than the studies show.
Sorry, I don’t think the link posted above came out right. Here is the quote:
“A Pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.”
–Life Together (Harper & Row, 1954),
pp. 29-30
Chris,
You’re right that stats aren’t everything and Bonhoeffer’s point should balance us out when we begin to beat the sheep rather than care for them.
But, I’ve been to multiple churches, and the stat seems generally true that 20% do 80% of the work. Many of the remaining 80% need to be challenged by what their schedules show about their priorities and their hearts. It is meant to be done with patience, but there is a place for rebuke (2 Ti 4:2)
I am concerned, however, that we clarify what “ministry” is. At one level, ministry is anything in which we consciously engage to bring God glory, especially as it builds up others and calls them to worship. This means that a mother who serves her husband and young children in the strength God provides (1 Pe 4:11) is ministering. A guy who meets with his church care group and intentionally looks for opportunities to celebrate God’s grace is ministering.
There should be something of a desire in every Christian’s heart to pray, serve, disciple, evangelize, engage culture, work politically, and glorify God through many other means – but few of us can do even several of these at one season, much less all. Let’s call out some for apathy, coax some into greater joy, and comfort some in the work God is already doing through them.
[...] A productivity blog might be an odd source for this topic, but I think they might be onto something. It would be worth your while thinking about your own answer to this, before clicking through to find out the biggest sin in your church. [...]