5 Ways Churches Changed Over the Past 50 Years

The Church’s Drift from Historic Evangelical Faith

I'd like to speak to you this morning about a an important subject that I've been thinking about, praying about for a long time. I was going to title this why I am no longer an evangelical and how I will now refer to myself as a Bible believer.

Of course, don't get nervous, I do still hold to the historic evangelical faith. I have not changed at all, but it's becoming very clear to me that many, if not most, so-called evangelical churches these days, they're not really following the scripture in many areas.

Now, it's not that they don't follow it at all, but here are at least five ways, and there are more, but at least five ways the evangelical church has changed over the past 50 years and where they no longer follow the scripture in these areas.

So, five things. Number one, a refusal to practice biblical separation. Number two, female pastors. Number three, refusal to practice excommunication. Number four, compromising on the Bible's view of sexuality and marriage.

Number five, the focus has shifted from being on God and on his word to now the focus is on us. And, of course, that's tied in with a seeker-sensitive movement, the positive only preaching, failure to preach the word, the whole counsel of God, etc.

Basically, for 1 ,900 years, all Christian churches practiced and agreed on these things. There have been plenty of things we have disagreed on, eschatology, mode of baptism, church government, but things like female pastors, having open lesbians singing in the choir, refusal to practice church discipline, I mean, these are new issues and the root problem is the same.

Somewhere around the 1960s, 1970s, churches intentionally started to change to keep up with a changing world and the results have not been good. Interestingly enough, this approach to change with a changing world, the Catholic Church did this first with the Second Vatican Council.

They found an ally, the Catholic Church did, in Billy Graham. So Billy helped to spread this to the Protestants and the Evangelicals. And at the same time, the charismatic movement was just beginning.

So these three groups really just had this emphasis on unity and let's set aside our differences and doctrine and let's just come together and hold hands. So out went separation, in came some of these new ideas.

Also around this time, everybody had not only a radio in their house, everyone now starting to have a television in their home. So this message was easily spread far and wide. And if you think this is maybe unfair, just to focus on the subject of ecclesiastical separation and churches working with other churches that believe totally different.

I don't think anyone can deny this. Nobody did more to change that than Billy Graham. So back in the day, churches, they fellowshiped with other like-minded churches. The idea that you're going to have a Baptist and a Pentecostal and a Catholic all working together or say, hey, well, we have little differences, but we're all going to come together.

I mean, that just didn't happen. But Billy Graham really, along with the Catholic Church, helped to change all of this. So really, the question is, do you think this is good or do you think it's bad? Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians and to the Galatians, was very clear that people that preach false doctrine, people that are in sin, people who preach another gospel certainly, Paul says, do not yoke together with them.

You must keep separate. And yet, Billy Graham yoked together with the Pope of Rome, with theological liberals who denied the virgin birth and the resurrection, and Billy for the Protestants and Vatican II for the Catholics.

They helped to change the attitude of most mainstream Christians and things really have not been the same since. I don't think anyone can really question this. The only question is, do you think this was a good thing or do you think this was a bad thing?

So concerning these subjects, I want to emphasize again, for the first 1 ,900 years of the church, nearly all people who believed the Bible and held to the evangelical faith, they pretty much agreed on these things, but it's only changed as of late, the past 40 to 50 years.

Now, there are many reasons why things have changed, I suppose, and why churches are not following the Bible in these areas, but I think there was an intentional effort for churches to change in order to accommodate the world, right?

So back during the cultural revolution of the 1960s, 1970s, it was around that time that churches shifted. They used to do it one way, now a new generation of pastors and evangelists, they decided that in order to reach the world, Christians needed to become more like the world, or at least the church needed to stop all these stringent rules and let's just let's just focus on love and peace and unity and set doctrine aside and bring everyone together.

The Seeker-Sensitive Shift and the Loss of Biblical Preaching

So let me start out with the last thing I mentioned, five ways the church has changed over the past 50 years, or how evangelical churches are no longer following the Bible in these areas. Number five, the focus has shifted from being on God to now the focus is on you.

The focus is on me. This is the seeker-sensitive approach to worship. Back in the 60s, 70s, unbelievers didn't want to go to church. Of course, they still don't want to go to church, right? But the idea was unbelievers, they don't want to go to church, but they would go to a concert.

And of course, rock and roll was the biggest thing going. So what happened? Just turned church into a rock concert and voila, now you will get unbelievers coming into the churches. But here's the thing, they might have come in, but they didn't really want to hear sound doctrine or Bible preaching.

So then that gets watered down. So then the sermons became touchy-feely, all about self-esteem, power of positive thinking, your best life now, etc. Well, what does the Bible say? 2nd Timothy 4 .2, Paul tells Timothy, this is your job, Timothy, as a pastor, you must what?

Preach the word, be instant, in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. But today, not only is doctrine seen as divisive, when people do things wrong, you can't even admonish or rebuke anyone anymore without some other pastor saying that you're mishandling things.

Today, the only word people know is love, and then love gets redefined. And you basically, what it means is you just need to be accepting of heresy and sin and all the rest. So this is one way the church has changed.

Compromise on Divorce, Sexuality, and Marriage

The next thing that happened, churches started to compromise on the biblical view of marriage and sexuality. Again, you can't really question that this has happened, it's just, do you think loosening things up has been good or has it had a negative effect?

So first, it became acceptable to divorce your spouse for any reason. Remember what Jesus, didn't Jesus get this question in Matthew 19? Is it lawful to divorce for any reason? And Jesus, the answer, short answer is no.

But in the 1970s, it became acceptable to get a divorce for whatever reason you had. Then that was accepted in the church, fornication and adultery were then tolerated. Now it's LGBT, right? So during the 1970s, states started passing what are called no fault divorce laws.

The church tried to keep up, so they accepted it, or at least tolerated it. Then on and on it went. And now you have churches flying the rainbow flag. So you've seen this dramatic shift. But you even have evangelicals, you say, well, evangelicals aren't flying the rainbow flag.

Well, now you have evangelicals jumping on board. Just to give an example of this, back in 2019, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is America's largest evangelical denomination, their president, a man named J .D. Greer, he said in a sermon from Romans 1 that Christians must be the fiercest supporters of LGBT rights.

Yeah, and he concluded that from a sermon on Romans 1. Okay, so if you know Romans 1, I mean, that's remarkable. But going back to our last point, I mean, that's not biblical, right? So churches are no longer preaching the word and sound doctrine.

Instead, they're just catering and compromising to accommodate the world. So that's the second way that churches have changed. The third way churches have changed over the past 50 years, how they're no longer following the scripture, is they fail or refuse to practice excommunication.

I know of about five churches in all of Franklin County that actually practice excommunication. Or let me rephrase that, the pastors practice it. Whether church members actually do or not is another story.

But excommunication is exactly what it sounds like. The person is to be put out of communication. So when a person is found to be in sin or teaching false doctrine and heresy, according to Jesus, this isn't according to me, according to Jesus in Matthew 18, if they do not repent, Jesus says that they are to be to you as a heathen and an outcast.

Or excuse me, a heathen and a tax collector. But the idea is they are to be seen as an outcast. Because heathen and tax collector, they were outcasts in Jewish society. Paul says in 1st Corinthians 5, do not even eat with such a one.

Now hardly any Christians actually follow the teachings of Christ on this. But again, that's just another thing where churches are not following the scripture. Now the the Amish do it and I think they go way too far.

Because they they excommunicate people for things that aren't even sinful. You know the Mennonites have done it and then get called legalistic. So if a church does this, all they have to do is follow the Bible and they're gonna have other churches attacking them.

But it's just another example of how churches are not following the Bible. For 1 ,900 years excommunication was upheld. It was understood. You can't allow this stuff to happen in the church. Why? Because Paul said, a little leaven leavens the whole lump.

For those who teach heresy, Matthew 18 doesn't even apply. Titus 3 10 says that they are to be admonished once then again and after that they are to be rejected. And in church history this was always practiced.

Of course the Catholics took it a step further and they burned heretics at the stake. Which I do not believe was the right thing to do. But church discipline, point is, before the 1960s it was practiced.

But once the churches just started trying to cater to the world, they wanted to bring in unbelievers. Unbelievers brought in their hedonistic lifestyle and their secular worldview. So the churches just began to absorb it.

They refused to excommunicate. Okay so the next way that evangelical churches, many of them, are no longer following the Bible. Female pastors. Now this is a controversial subject today. Why? I know I sound like a broken record but in the 1960s 1970s churches started to embrace feminism.

Notice something. God in the Old Testament determined that all the priests would be men. In the New Testament Jesus chose 12 apostles. They were all men. For 1 ,900 years church history all Christian pastors and bishops were men.

Why is that? Well the Bible says in 1st Timothy 2 12 that women are not permitted to teach nor to exercise authority over a man. And the context of 1st Timothy is a pastoral epistle. So Paul is speaking about the qualifications of a pastor or a bishop.

In chapter 3 he explicitly says he must be a he. A pastor must be a man. But in the 20th century all that is out the window. And people come along today and say well that was just cultural. Well Paul does not root his argument in the culture.

He roots it in the created order that Adam was formed first and then Eve. So there is male headship. By simply pointing out these facts today you'll get called a you know misogynist and sexist and all the rest.

Well that would make God a misogynist if that's really how you feel. And by the way if you, which is blasphemy, but if you just beware if you accept this argument well yeah it was just cultural. That's the way things were back then.

Times have changed. So we need to change with the times. That that is what has led to all the rainbow churches. Because you just if you accept that argument you basically have to change with whatever the world's doing.

Okay and my friends that's the whole problem. That's the that's the whole thing I'm talking about here. Churches have changed to keep up with a changing world. The fifth way and final way. Well there's a lot more but as far as what I'm going to talk about this morning.

The fifth way churches have changed over the past 50 years. They do not practice separation. They do not practice separation. I got this from the website gotquestions .org. Ecclesiastical separation involves the decisions of a church concerning its ties to other organizations based on their theology or practices.

Separatism is implied in the very word church which comes from the Greek word Ecclesia meaning a called-out assembly. In Jesus's letter to the church at Pergamum in Revelation 2 he warned against tolerating those who taught false doctrine.

The church was to be separate, breaking ties with heresy. A modern example of ecclesiastical separation could be a denomination stance against ecumenical alliances which would unite the church with apostates.

I personally could not have fellowship with a pastor who defends or promotes heretics or false teachers. Why? Because the Apostle Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 6 17 come out from among them and be separate says the Lord.

Do not touch what is unclean and I will receive you. But churches today they're willing to partner with pretty much anybody and that's really been playing out over the past well locally just the past six months in particular.

A Call to Return to Biblical Faithfulness

So in conclusion he who has an ear let him hear. What should Christians do if they find you say what what should I do about it? What do I do with this information? Well make sure your church is following the Bible.

Take these five areas. Is your church following the scripture in these areas? If your church is not doing that either share this video which will be on YouTube. Share this video with them see what they say.

Try to call them back to faithfulness to the Word of God and if your church is not willing to do that they're just going to continue to disobey the Word of God. You should find a church that does obey.

You know it's really that simple.