Struggling with the Church | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we are talking about the struggle with the modern.

Church.

If you've walked in and you feel like it's plastic, it's cold, you feel disconnected, you look around and you feel like an alien. We want to talk about that and why we have those struggles. Stay tuned.

A simple and easy way for you to help support Theocast each month is by shopping at Amazon through the Amazon Smile program. When you make a purchase through Amazon Smile, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to our ministry.

To learn how to sign up, just go to theocast .org slash give.

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ's conversations about the Christian life from a reformed and I would dare say pastoral perspective. Today your hosts are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I am John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Justin, my friend, it is good to be with you this morning. We have a lot, including a really good book to give away today.

We do have a good book to give away today. We like to be generous here at Theocast. I mean, Christ has given us his own righteousness, and so the least we can do is give people.

Books.

That includes how to know what Christ's righteousness is.

Totally.

And liberating books about the Christian life and the church and what those things might look like. So today we're excited to give away a book entitled Ordinary by our brother and dare I say even a friend of Theocast, Michael Horton.

Yeah.

Good on there. We need to have him on again.

We do.

And the subtitle of Dr. Horton's book, Ordinary, is Sustainable Faith in a Radical Restless.

World.

It's a good book and a lot of good stuff contained therein. So again, we're pumped to give it away today. And as is always the case, we use our handy dandy software app called the Wheel of Names. What a name that is, the Wheel of Names.

Every time I say it, I'm just like, is this really what it's called? And we input all of our members' names in there and out pops the winner.

It's a lot. It takes a lot to spin that wheel.

And we trust the Lord rules and reigns even over something called the Wheel of Names. And this week, the winner is Kevin Almeida. I probably just butchered your name. It might be Kevin Almeida. Don't know.

Could be either of those. Kevin, I trust you're going to know who you are and what I mean to say and you're going to give me credit.

We're going to send you an email.

Pronounce your name correctly. Yeah, we'll send you an email and give some instructions on how to claim this free book. And then we will also be giving away another copy of Ordinary via social media. So today is Wednesday as this podcast is releasing.

If you go to any of our social media platforms, that would be Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, you will see instructions about how to enter yourself into the fray for this additional giveaway book. And it includes, I think, like sharing the posts and tagging people and all of that stuff.

The instructions are there for those of you who are social media types, avail yourselves of that. And you might also win a copy of Ordinary by Michael Horton and we will announce that winner tomorrow, which will be Thursday.

If you want to just buy that book, because it's the first time you're hearing about it and it is going to be related to our topic today, there'll be a link in our podcast description on our website and in your podcast.

And if you use that link, then Theocast will receive a portion of that purchase that goes to our ministry. So it's a way to support us. And support Michael Horton, which we would totally recommend you to do.

He writes a lot of good stuff.

That's right. Well, Justin, today is a conversation that you and I seem to have almost every week. We are trying to shepherd people that are coming into our context and our church and help them, I would say, find out what does it look like to find not only rest in Christ, but truly rest within the community of Christ, which is the design of God.

It says Jesus died for the church and Paul dedicated his life for the church. And I think the entire New Testament is focused and centered on what does the local New Testament church look like in a fallen, sinful world?

How does the gospel go forward in our context and in the world? So what happens, though, is the same thing that's happened to Justin and I. Justin and I grew up in both very different backgrounds. I'm sure he'll reference it, but his was more of a liberal Baptist background.

Mine was more of a fundamentalist background. And as we have grown in our theology and as pastors, we have been able to look at history and we are making assessments about the Christian life and church that are way off.

And you move one percent off of a line and you start walking that line for many years. And before you know it, you're miles off the mark. And we are definitely miles off the mark. And what I wanted to do today and what Justin wanted to do is help you think through your feelings, your observations, your conclusions, and I would even say comparisons to scripture and the local context of the church.

And I know there's a broad range of churches that are out there, but I will say what we're talking about today has impacted almost every single denomination that's out there and why we, one, wanted to recommend this book, but two, more importantly, have a conversation about what happened to the church and why I would say most people struggle with the church.

And I'm going to make this observation up front, Justin, why most books about the Christian life have nothing to say about the church or what they do have to say about the church is very foreign to something like Ephesians 4.

So that's what we're going to talk about today is the struggle with the modern church, what we see, and hopefully put some words to your own thoughts about your feelings about the local church. So, Justin, I kind of just wanted to open it up there and say, let's talk about when we look at the modern church, I mean, don't hold back, my friend, what is wrong with this context and how is it that we have got to this place?

So let's start with what's wrong. Like when you walk into a modern, broader evangelical church, almost an evading denomination, describe it to me.

Gosh, so many thoughts running around in my head right now, even just want to affirm everything you said and maybe state from the outset that one of the things that I aim to do as a pastor, second only to helping people understand their need for Christ, is to help people understand their need for the church and in one sense to help people understand how those two things go together, how we need Christ and we need each other.

And yeah, it's just not a common notion in our current church context, and there are a million reasons why books written today about the Christian life don't have the church.

In them.

A lot of reasons for that, but one of the reasons for that is this conversation we're having today because so many people have had terrible experiences in the church. They are disenchanted with the church.

They feel jaded and burned by the church and have never seen anything legitimate or anything that seems to have any merit in their entire life, in their experience of going to church. And so we want to unpack some of that today and have an honest conversation about some of our own experiences and hopefully, as you said, put words to the thoughts that many.

Have had.

So we'll just maybe ping pong this back and forth a little bit. Like you said, I grew up in a more liberal environment theologically, but the culture of the church that I grew up in was still moralistic.

So it was this combination of an aversion to doctrine because all that does is divide, and it binds us, and it's bad. But then the emphasis was always just on you being a good person and doing the right stuff and not doing the bad stuff.

And it was a very, very confused and difficult situation, right? So I grew up thinking that Jesus was legit and knowing that He was the real deal. And there was something about Him that I couldn't walk away from, but everything else about the Christian life that I had been presented with and everything that I had ever seen in the church, I was like, man, this is whack.

And I was incredibly disenchanted with the church as an institution and even Christianity as a religion in light of everything that I had seen. I mean, I'll just outline a little bit of what I saw. And like I said, man, we'll go back and forth here.

I think for sure, one of the things that stands out for many people is the fact that the church feels and seems to be very superficial, that there is no real admission of real grievous, heinous, damnable sins.

Like all people are happy struggles, right? And we may get there in a minute. Like there's no place for the weak, right? But people seem to be very hesitant to admit the very dark things that go on in everybody's mind and heart, right?

Like we know they're there, but you don't ever talk about them. You're happy to admit that you struggle with pride or whatever, or maybe that you worry a lot, but you're not really happy to talk about things that are much maybe darker and more sinister that are going on inside of you.

And there seems to be alongside this, John, a lack of an awareness of sin at the same time. And so people seem to think that they're doing a lot better than they are. And so there's all this talk about all the things that we need to be doing and the things that we shouldn't be doing.

And it's just almost full-blown works righteousness sometimes in terms of the way that it's presented. And you look around and everybody seems happy to listen to that kind of talk. And your conclusion is, well, I guess everybody else is crushing it because nobody seems disturbed by the fact that we're just being told things that we need to do and things that we need to refrain from doing as though that's going to earn us righteousness before the Lord.

And I guess all these people are doing well, but I know I'm not. And so then you're sitting there thinking, man, I must be the only unrighteous hypocrite of this whole bunch. And clearly this place isn't for me because apparently these people have it all together.

You know, they look put together. They're talking. They're saying the right stuff. They seem to understand themselves to just be doing well. And every time they pull the lever, it's trip sevens. And, you know, I'm just like, well, you know, I'm over here floundering and struggling with my own conscience, and I've blown it countless times this week.

And if this is Christianity, then either Christianity is a sham or it didn't work for me. And so then our conclusion is I'm going to go elsewhere because the church has nothing for a sinner like me.

It can also become personality driven. So those who have an outgoing, energetic, bubbly personality seem to be the ones that are always the active good Christians. And those who seem to be quiet, introspective, or even melancholy can be the ones who aren't the good Christians.

And it's a divide. And I will tell you, this is true of not just one denomination. We're not even going to pick on a denomination because we're going to explain how this really has influenced a lot. It's just changed the way the structure and the purpose of the church is supposed to be.

But you do, you walk into a context of a church and the conversations are not on a familiar level, like the way you would talk to your brother or sister or your wife. They are on a very superficial level.

How was your day? How was your week? You know, when there is a small group, the community groups tend to be really just social groups where you talk about social stuff. You're not talking about the real, the muck of the Christian life.

And, you know, the prayer requests are like, well, I just feel like I need to pray more or, you know, I've been struggling with this or my pride or that, or, you know, I need a new job. And what's really crushing you and what's going on in the depression, that is not allowed.

I've had a man in my church recently who talked about expressing some serious issues in his life at a men's group, and they all looked at him like he was crazy. Or they'll just say, well, man, you know, you need to read your Bible more and you need to pray.

And that's it. That's the solution. And so people don't share because if the response to everything is read your Bible and pray more, then why should I even tell you I'm struggling? I already know the answer you're going to give me.

So I'm just not going to say anything and that way I won't be judged and I won't feel guilty about my own struggles.

Yeah.

What you're describing is a lack of legitimate community. There's a lot of, you know, language about community and you might even have groups that bear that name. But to your point, there's no real admission of weakness.

There's no real confession of sin where we are legitimately bearing our souls and talking about what's really going on. We all just kind of speak in this very calculated language because, like you said, we have either experienced this in the past or we've seen it happen to other people where they do confess legitimate sin and legitimate struggle and they are shamed, judged, or run out of town on a rail.

And we leave that thinking, well, I'm never going to do that again. Or man, I saw what happened to that person. I'm never going to do that because it just did not go well. And in addition to that, I think that many of us have been in church context where we look around and we listen to what's being said and just the way the whole thing is presented to us.

It's like this whole project is about constant improvement. This whole project is about onward and upward and we are always getting better. Everything is always exciting. Every Sunday is literally better than the one before.

And we look at that and we're like, that's not how my life works. We feel like, man, this feels like a lot of hot air and a lot of hype and a lot of sunshine is being pumped at me. But this just doesn't feel legitimate.

It doesn't feel authentic. And the way that we can end up coming away from that too, aside from it just feeling fake, is because the presentation is one of we're always getting better. We're always improving this triumph.

We are conquerors and we are triumphant. We are the people who are having victory over sin and struggle and weakness and the like. We conclude that there is no place for the weak in the church. There's no place for the struggler in the church.

There's no place, as I said a minute ago, for the miserable sinner. And so I think for many people, especially the ones who have more tender consciences, for people who have proclivities and bends in their frame where they struggle with melancholy, depression, anxiety, etc., people like that just end up feeling like there is no place for them because they cannot keep up.

And the tender conscience in the room looks around and assesses what's going on and then within and assesses his or her own heart and mind and thinks, well, I have never done anything that's legitimate or adequate.

I've never loved God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I've never loved my neighbor as myself. I've not done this as I should. I've failed to do that as I should. And so all of this improvement stuff and this constantly getting better stuff and this constantly getting victory, it's like, well, I'm a failure.

I just don't fit here. Yeah, and then another thought real quick is talking about a lack of authenticity and a lack of an ability to confess sin, I do think there are a lot of environments where people not only have they been burned when they've confessed sin, they just received horrible counsel when they have confessed things in their lives.

And I'm not even talking about reductionistic, somewhat absurd stuff. It's like, well, read the Bible and I'm sure it'll be better next week or whatever. I'm talking about just legitimately false stuff where they've brought some issue, some deep issue of a struggle with sexuality or their, I don't know.

I mean, a marriage is falling apart and the husband and wife go and seek counsel and they're just told ridiculous things by pastors. You know, well, this is what's going to fix your marriage. And, you know, they leave or maybe in particular, one person in the marriage leaves thinking, well, that's the last time I'm ever going to trust a pastor after what I just heard.

Justin Perdue. That's right.

Yeah, yeah, there is there. The trust for the church definitely is not there. We understand that the Bible emphasizes the church, the church is good. But what we experience in the church is not what we feel is right.

Feeling is a dangerous word to say, but within your soul, you feel this dry, this cold distance. And yet you're yearning for this warm, compassionate connection to Christ and His body. When I was first married, I started to sell this insurance and we would go to these conferences and sell at this conference in Texas.

And, you know, these people are making all this money and they're really talking to us about how we can make money. And, you know, I'm trying to just get through college and I'm just trying to sell this insurance on the side so I can make money.

And then they are hyping it up and it's like bumping music and we're jumping and we're clapping. And, you know, it's everything is high, high, high energy and a ton of emotion. And so you go walking out of there at the end of that conference and there's one conclusion on your mind.

Like everyone around me is successful. Everyone around me is doing it. If I want to do it, it's up to me. And I walk out of there going, all right, if I try harder and I be better and I work longer, I can be like that.

And that is what church feels like. It is high energy. It's pumping. And the pastor basically tells you all of these amazing stories. And at the end you go, all right, if I try harder this week, I can be like that.

Yeah, like it ultimately at the end of the day depends upon me. And that can be presented in a number of ways. It can be in this quasi prosperity way, but it also can be in this way where we're told that we need to be more disciplined and our lives will go better and we won't sin as much and all those things.

And it's kind of like a smack on the backside and go out there and don't disappoint God,.

You know.

And we leave ultimately discouraged because, again, we think, well, this clearly depends upon me, at least in some measure, and my life isn't going that well and I'm still struggling. So I must be messing this up and God is displeased with me.

And so, yeah, we leave exhausted and not encouraged. A couple of other observations just really quickly from me. These are not related at all. So I'm going to do the best that I can here. Another thing that I think is hard for people is that whenever they have raised concerns in the church, those concerns have been met with pride, defensiveness, and condescension rather than humility, patience, grace, and charity.

And that's sad, right? Because I know you and I, John, have had this conversation offline many times about how we will fail in this because we're sinners too, but one of our chief aims as pastors in our respective churches is to meet the concerns of our people and even critiques that are raised.

Or when somebody comes to us and they've been hurt by us or whatever it is, to aim to meet that with humility and charity and grace and patience rather than being proud and defensive. And I think pride is only fueled.

Like that flame of pride is only fanned and there's gas poured on that fire by a lot of the pietistic culture that exists in the church that tells you, you will be doing better if you are disciplined and if you apply yourself in these particular ways.

And people think that their discipline and their devotion and their dedication is what has gotten them to where they are. And I don't want to impugn people's motivations, but I think they end up looking down upon others who are not doing as well as they are and are just unable to hear from people that may raise legitimate concerns before them.

The last thing I want to say, Holmes, before we move forward in terms of struggles with the church is this. When we go to services, it seems that the entire thing, or at least most of it, is aimed at the non-believer to try to bring the non-believer in.

And what that means is that the gospel in particular, the way of salvation, Christ for you, that is almost exclusively preached to the non-Christian in order to get them to make that decision to trust in Christ.

But then when it comes to the Christian life and the day-to-day and the week-to-week, once I am in, really all I'm getting is a bunch of instruction on how to live better, how to improve, five steps to this, here are things that you need to flee from, here are ways to be disciplined.

And I end up being exhausted by that because I'm not actually given Jesus in the service. I am maybe at best in a situation where Jesus is assumed, like, yeah, we all believe the gospel, but we're going to talk about how you should live today.

And so our experience of church is not one of rest. It's not one of being reminded that Christ is our righteousness. It's not one of being comforted in the Lord Jesus Christ and thereby being motivated to live out of love and joy and gratitude.

It's really a culture that's driven by guilt and shame and fear and dread and judgment for the believer. And Christ is really only held out to somebody who has not yet believed. And then it's almost like nobody would ever say it this way.

I mean, Stephen Furtick did recently. But a lot of people go to churches where it's kind of like, yeah, if you're a Christian, this church isn't for you. This church is for the non-believer, man. Like, if you're in, we got nothing for you here.

And it's like, in some ways, we might not almost do people a service if we were just as honest as Stephen Furtick is in saying that this church elevation doesn't exist for the Christian. You know, this church just exists to bring people in because in many churches, that's how they function anyway.

And the Christians are sitting there starving and are sitting there discouraged and dry because they're not being given Jesus, who is their life. And apart from him, they can do nothing.

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You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

Well, the question then becomes, how did we get here? We're going to talk about what we think the biblical church looks like. It's part of what this podcast is about, thinking things from a Reformed perspective, and we will get there eventually.

But we want to talk about how we got here. Sometimes it's helpful to understand and deconstruct and pull back the structure of a church or the structure of anything and ask, why was it built this way?

And I would say the modern church is a patchwork of multi-theology that is not centered on a biblical theology. And so I think we're going to start with revivalism. We're definitely going to talk about the emergent church and even the influence, the massive influence of the purpose-driven church by Rick Warren.

So something we reference a lot, but I think it's important for you to understand. Justin, let's talk about revivalism a little bit.

Justin Perdue. Totally.

Justin Perdue. You have, it's a response to cold orthodoxy. You think that the church has lost its way. It's only concerned, you know, they call it the frozen chosen, and the church is dying. And so you have men who want to revive, what's this word, revivalism, revive the church, get them back excited.

And so it is not based upon theology. It is not based upon doctrine, definitely not based upon the history of the church. And you have men who are coming in and they are going to preach passionate, fiery sermons to get people to repent.

From revivalism, you have all kinds of new things introduced into the church, which is event-based theology, meaning that revivalism wasn't happening inside churches. It was happening inside tent meetings.

These were entertainment.

Justin Perdue. It was happening outside the local gathering on the Lord's Day.

Justin Perdue. That's right. They would go from town to town. It's kind of where Billy Graham really got his wings is this idea of these massive events coming from town to town. You have to understand during revivalism, there was no entertainment.

There was no radio. There's no TV. So when you have someone publicly coming and speaking and it's in the center of town and you can hear it, you're going to be drawn into that. And this is where you start hearing about the anxious bench and the famous sawdust trail, if you don't know what that means.

I think concerns with revivalism are several. I mean, you've mentioned some of them. One is the relocation of really the ministry of the word. It's removed from the corporate gathering on the Lord's Day, and it's taken outside of the regular assembly and in a field or a tent meeting or something like that is where that occurs.

There is a huge emphasis on conversion, making a decision for Christ. Not that that's a bad thing to desire, but there is perhaps an off-centered emphasis in any means necessary to get those professions of faith and to see conversion happen.

That's what we want to do. And then in addition to that, there's a huge emphasis on moral transformation, because there's always a concern with lax and apathetic living and lawlessness that is a piece of revivalism.

And so as you look back through the history of the church, the first and second great awakening are both revivalistic movements. Now, the first one was better than the second in terms of the theology that was being preached.

George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards are preaching better doctrine in terms of even the gospel and how people are saved than many in the second great awakening were. Charles Finney and others, that's where the new methods and all kinds of things were introduced into the church.

Like you mentioned, the anxious bench and the altar call and all of these kinds of things came about in the early to middle part of the 1800s as a result of that movement. So it was worse than the first great awakening for sure theologically, but the whole project we would say, and this sounds scandalous to say, the whole project of revivalism in our minds from our perspective, and this is again thinking about scripture and thinking about the history of the church and the like, the whole project was skewed and off.

What we would be contending for is the Lord brings revival. He's the one who does that, and He's going to do it through the means that He has given us, and He's going to do it through the ordinary means of grace that are a piece of the corporate reality of the gathered church on the Lord's day when we gather for the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments, for prayer, and for song.

We trust Him to do His work there rather than using these other more extraordinary measures to bring about what we say is a work of God.

Right, yeah, and it was performance-based theology. They were going after moral transformation. They were preaching against all kinds of things. Gambling, they were preaching against drinking. Right, and so they're trying to shut down bars.

They're trying to shut down pool houses, and there's a massive movement. You have men like Charles Finney who basically said, I could convince pretty much an entire room to come to be converted to Christ.

Just give me enough time. He was a great salesmanship and a lawyer.

He was a fiery preacher, but his theology is so terrible that he would say that every time a Christian sins, he or she needs to be reconverted. This is how you preach fire and brimstone messages. If you're dealing with people who are legitimately converted, if you're dealing with regenerate people who are aware of their sin, it is not hard to convince them they're sinners, but then when you tell them that every time you sin, you basically are now unsaved again, and what you need to do is come forward to the front.

I mean, I think people hearing this, it's like, okay, well, this is where a lot of this mess of not only coming forward for the altar call to profess faith, but this whole rededication of life and all this stuff.

This is where it comes, right?

Absolutely, so you have a de-emphasizing doctrine, creeds, and confession. These men were not trying to promote a theology based on church history that had been faithfully handed down to them. They were emphasizing the heart of it behind it.

I'm thankful they're emphasizing evangelism and preaching the gospel, but just because someone has good intentions doesn't mean their actions and the way they fulfilled it is correct. I think a lot of the assessment of the men who were doing revivalistic preaching, they happened to the dead orthodoxy, and a lot of that, Justin and I would say, they too lost their way.

This is part of being a sinner, and this is why there's so much warning in the New Testament about who should be elders and who should be teachers, and Paul's warning against those who are shepherding, but the response had such a ripple effect.

I mean, the wave of this has influenced church history hugely. Millions of churches and Christians around the world have been influenced by this revivalistic movement, so we're going to move forward a little bit.

Revivalism starts to take shift and change where you're starting to see a de-emphasizing of doctrine. Even theological schools are dying because men are not seeing the necessity of being well trained in church history and in the languages and in doctrine, and all of a sudden, men who are performing well and know how to articulate themselves well or are high energy, I would even say good salesmen, you start to see the shift, and where the shift, I think, in the 90s explodes is in the emergent church, which for a while, it was really hard to even pin down what does the emergent church even mean.

Justin Perdue Yeah, it's kind of a big tip.

Jon Moffitt. Right, but Rob Bell is really big in this. You have Mark Driscoll coming out of it, but understanding the emergent church was dealing with postmodernism, and what they are trying to fight against and what they are really pushing back against is resonating with people in the early 90s, in the 2000s, where you had cold hard facts, and that was cold and distant from our culture.

They wanted something that was more warm and inviting. Subjectivity versus objectivity or spirituality over religion. I can remember that. I don't want a religion. I want a relationship, and it's images versus word or outward versus inward, feeling versus truth.

I mean, you can kind of go on, but this is what the emergent church really drew in this younger crowd, and it changed the Atollan. They created these massive communities, these people who were excited.

Churches exploded, but as Justin had said, the entire experience came more about how do we draw in a bigger crowd, and how do we draw it in and be relevant to the culture, and it became all about relevancy.

It did not become about faithfulness to the word of God, allowing the word of God to convict people of sin, leading to the hope of Christ in the gospel. It became more about how do we help people have an experience of God, and the experience became the primary driver of what church looked like.

One other piece of this in terms of how did we get here, I'm going to use a few words and define them. The current church context and the things that we're describing today are in part a result of triumphalism, and that again is a way to describe this onward and upward, always improving dynamic.

The current church context is a result of pietism, which is a hyper focus on how we are doing on our affections for God, on our disciplines, our obedience, and our performance. So it's this very inward, very introspective posture that has certainly characterized the church.

So you combine that with a triumphalistic perspective of you're always needing to get better, and then you're hyper introspective and always assessing you and your affections and your disciplines and your obedience.

That's a big piece of how we've gotten to where we are. Then in addition to that, all of this, the triumphalistic stuff and the pietistic stuff is a part of a larger theology of glory. Again, it's that we're strong, we're getting better, we're getting victory, and all of that versus what has historically been understood as a theology of the cross that says that we are in fact weak still.

Yes, Christ is strong, but we are not. We are weak, we are needy, and that is where the grace and mercy of Christ is made manifest and obvious as He meets us in our need and our weakness. Right now, not only will we be weak, we will suffer, but there is a glory that awaits us.

That kind of theology has just gone by the wayside in most churches today, which is what has resulted in something that we were describing earlier, where there's just no place for the struggler. There's no place for the weak.

There's no place, dare we say it, even for the sinner. Certainly not the miserable sinner, as Augustine would have called us. Augustine was lambasted for propagating what many called a miserable sinner version of Christianity.

If we're going to be lumped in with him, I guess guilty is charged to say that, yeah, we are miserable sinners and Christ is our only hope. But that's not what's been heralded to many of us in our church experience, and it's left many of us jaded and disenchanted and feeling like the church just clearly is not.

For us.