Pastors are Failing

The Burden of Spiritual Self-Management When Pastors Fail

Because pastors aren't doing their jobs, now it's left up to the Christian. And Christians go home, and they feel the responsibility to take care of themselves, to make sure that they're growing spiritually.

And this is where you hear a lot about Bible reading. You better be reading your Bible. What's wrong with you? How come you're not reading your Bible more? And we use Bible reading, really, as a means of assurance.

Do you read your Bible? How come you're not reading your Bible? And the entire Christian life falls upon me, the individual. Yet, this Bible we herald so much, and we consider to be so valuable and so important, we call it God's Word, and yet we pay so little attention to it.

I would even say the ignorance level, as what's inside the Bible, is probably just as high as it was back during the Dark Ages, when Christians weren't allowed to have the Bible. Just because we have access doesn't mean we know what's in it.

I wanted to have a little bit of a conversation today about what's happening today, what's happening with Christians, what's happening with churches, and let's maybe have a little bit of a waking-up conversation about the reality of what the Bible says and how we are just not applying it.

What Church Is Supposed to Be Doing on Sundays

And what's happening on Sundays is anything but what God had intended originally for the church to be. You have, right after the resurrection, you have Jesus, who's talking with Jesus and John, and in the book of John.

And Jesus looks at Peter, and He says something that is just so important. Peter, feed my sheep. And then He says, Peter, tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. This language of the sheep being fed and cared for, Paul even picks up on this when he uses the language of the pure milk of the Word and the meat of the Word, where we are using it, think about it, to sustain and build and grow our faith as Christians.

We're being stronger in our growth. And yet when we show up at church, what are we getting? Well, it depends on what kind of church that you go to. In some settings, it's entertainment. It's great music, and it's lively illustrations and helpful tips.

But you aren't being given the pure milk of the Word. You aren't being led to see the glory of Christ, where God is being expressed in the work of Jesus Christ, as it says in 2 Corinthians. What you've been given is little laws.

Do these things like a proverb, and you'll do better. Like health tips, but they're somehow spiritual health tips, but not necessarily connected to the Bible. Or you could be going to a very conservative church, and you hear rip-firing preaching, and your face gets ripped off every Sunday, and you walk out of there feeling guilty because of the amount of sin that you have in your life, and you haven't been dedicated enough, and you haven't done enough, and you haven't given enough, and it's enough, enough, enough, enough.

All you hear is, you are not enough. And the answer to that is, well, you're not enough. You haven't done enough, and you never will do enough. This is why we herald and sing and proclaim weekly that Christ is enough.

Why the Gospel Must Be Central in Weekly Preaching

We just don't know what church is for anymore. And the Christian is left flapping in the wind. We're the ones sinking. We're the ones drowning with no hope. And the very source, the life preserver, that which brings hope to the weary Christian is lost.

And so this is a little bit of a serious conversation. What is the purpose of preaching? What are we doing on a Sunday? What is the design of the church? It seems like church is whatever works. It's pragmatic.

Whatever gets the largest crowd and whatever we can do to emotionally move people. So it's those who are good at emotion and gathering crowds. That becomes church. It really is kind of a social experiment movement.

And is that true of every case of every church that is out there? No, but it definitely is intriguing, right? Because big churches means big places where God is at. That's not necessarily true. And as we have gathered together to see all of this new movement in church, those who sit there have to wonder, what's really wrong with me?

I don't feel as if the power of God is moving within me. And the other thing that's unfortunately lost, the most important part of this entire conversation, is we have misplaced the gospel. The gospel is, well, that's how you get saved.

The gospel is for the lost. That's when you evangelize. And you throw it at the end of a sermon in case there's someone there who didn't get the good tips of how to be a better Christian. You throw the gospel in there so they can at least get the first entry feed done.

Get that entry part over. Get your T-shirt. Get baptized. We'll clap for you. But then we don't need the gospel anymore. That's for the lost. But that's just not the case. As a matter of fact, what we hear coming from Christ and from Peter and from Paul is that we need Christ week in, week out.

The good news of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we need it week in, week out. As a matter of fact, in 2 Peter 1 .9, he lists all of these qualities that we should be adding to our faith, which is gentleness, meekness, and patience, and kindness.

You know what he motivates them with as if it's not there? If you've not been obeying these qualities, he says you forgot the gospel. He says you have forgotten. You've been cleansed from your former sins.

The gospel becomes the pinnacle moment of every church service. It is the point of what we are. Without Christ and him crucified, Paul says, what are we doing? If Christ is not raised from the dead, which is the greatest news of all, what are we doing as a church?

We are to be pitied among all men. Why are we even here? What is wrong with us? Let me ask you this question as well. What are we even doing when we use the word preaching? Preaching is that moment in the service where the pastor gets up and he gives a motivational speech.

He's going to tie it and connect it to the Bible. Some may have that experience where it's a motivational speech, and others it's you're getting beat down. There's loud, hard preaching about how much you don't really live a holy life, and you should, and you should be dedicating your life more.

But neither one of them are being fed the good news of Christ. They're not being fed the pure milk of the word, the meat of the gospel. Preaching, the purpose of it is persuasion. It's to persuade us to believe in the truth of Christ.

John, in his gospel, in chapter 20, he says that, I write these things that you might believe, and in believing you have eternal life. He wrote an entire book about the person and work of Christ, his death, burial, and resurrection, and the ascension.

In the end of it, he says, I wrote this so that when you hear it, you believe that Christ is sufficient and you have life. Most of the time when we go to church and we're involved in church, we're being told about how to be sufficient, how to be a sufficient husband, and a sufficient father, and co-worker, and American, and church worker.

We aren't being given the sufficiency of Christ. No wonder why we are so struggling as a nation, not as far as like Americans, but as Christians. It just seems like there's so many who are lost, and weary, and beat up, and tired, and exhausted, and looking elsewhere.

I did a whole video on deconstructing. There's no wonder why in an episode on it. No wonder why people are deconstructing from this kind of Christianity, because it's not really Christianity. There's no Christ in it.

This is all about humanity. This is about us and our life. This isn't about Christ's entity being little Christs. So the church, I think it's time for us to be serious and demand from the church what it's supposed to be.

The Church as a Place of Unity, Growth, and Gospel Proclamation

The church is supposed to be that area that Paul describes it as when it's functioning as it should, it binds everybody together in one unity in the love of Christ, and we grow with a supernatural growth, a growth you cannot get on your own.

It says to the full knowledge of the love of Christ. That's a promise. Not only does he give it in Ephesians, but he gives it in Romans 12 as well, Ephesians 4 and Romans 12. This promise that the church should be proclaiming the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ week in and week out, and then gathering together to fellowship and care and love for one another and to teach and to build one another up.

It's like basically we're told to go home and try not to sin this week, and here are five ways not to sin, and yet Hebrews says, consider how to build one another up that you may not sin. How are you building each other up?

By telling each other not to sin? That's not a motivation. We're reminding ourselves that Christ is sufficient to get us through every daily trial that we're going to find ourselves in, but the church seems to be focused introspectively.

We're focused in on ourselves, and we're not focused in on the object of our faith, which is outside of us, which is Christ. I think that it's time for all of us to start evaluating we who are pastors, we who are congregants.

Is Christ really the center of our church? Is Jesus really the point of why we're here on this earth? We are told to be awaiting his return, to eagerly be looking for the restoration of all things, but when we go to church, we're not being reminded of what we will be.

This is 1 John 3, 1 through 5. We aren't eagerly looking to the purity of who God is and anticipation of his return and the hope and the joy. We are looking to how to survive or even thrive, like how to get all the blessings of God now, as if somehow we're lacking the blessings of God.

We have all the blessings of Christ by faith alone because that's part of our inheritance as children. That's what should be proclaimed. The last thing I want to say is most of us probably have lost what is the very point of the Bible.

This is God's word. That's not a shocker for us, but you have one author who's got 40 writers proclaiming his truth to us. In the end, this is what the Reformation really recovered, is that the Bible is about one story, and that story is how Jesus Christ redeems sinners.

When we preach the entirety of the word, as Paul tells Timothy, in season and out of season, the pure milk of the word, the meat of the word, we should be finalizing our conclusions on the sufficiency of Jesus Christ, because that is the conclusion of the book.

The first promise is in Genesis 3 .15 that Christ is going to come and restore Adam and Eve. What do we celebrate in Revelation 21? The restoration of all things. What happens in between? The fulfillment of God's faithfulness to sinners who are in desperate need of restoration.

That means it doesn't matter what book you're in, every week we can run and trust in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ, no matter what. Hope this was encouraging for you. Find a good church. Let's keep the Reformation going forward, where we're going back to the source of Christ.

Semper Firmamanda, church. Let's make sure that Christ stays central.