While reading this quote, I want you to try to guess who said it before reading the name below.
"The contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust."
This letter was written over 40 years ago. It is from "Letter from the Birmingham jail. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." I first read it this past week in "a hole in our gospel" by Rich Sterns. I don't think there is much to add to it. There are those that have been successful at recapturing the sacrificial spirit and those that haven't. I think that in this quote we have the solution to the decline of the Church in America. The church has been loosing followers like crazy, and lots of people do dismiss it as an irrelevant social club, and are disgusted with it. I know people like this. How do we reach them? How do we reclaim those that have been lost? It is by seeking justice, loving the poor, the orphan and the widow. Too many churches have turned into state of the art entertainment places. One could walk in and mistake it for a theater. That is not how we make lasting change. I think this quote is true or truer now than 40 years ago.
ISA 58:6 "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
JER 22:16 He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?"
declares the LORD.
James 1:27
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Nathan, I agree with what you've written, but I think it goes even deeper.
ReplyDeleteIn the letters to the churchs (Rev 3 and 4), God says that not only have some neglected those things, but we are lukewarm, have lost our first love, have listened to false teachings and been led astray. His bottom line for all the churches is to hold fast to Him, to keep his commands and to overcome in order to reap the reward.
If the church has a hole in it it begins, as Martin Luther said, because "The contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound..." The *voice* of the church is not to preach justice, it is to preach the risen Lamb of God with salvation for the nations in His blood. Hallelujah! The *actions or deeds* of the church are to act justly and righteously as our response to his Lordship.
Rev 2:4 says that God held against the Church at Ephesus that they had left their first love. They were doing deeds, not tolerating evil and testing those who called themselves apostles, yet Jesus said if they did not return to their first love, he was going to remove their lampstand. The lampstands in Revelation are the churches.
In removing the lampstand, Jesus was saying they would cease to be a church and as such, no longer His Bride. Those who did not first love Him were not overcomers and not entitled to an inheritance in the Kingdom.
I agree, there was so much more I felt like I could say and the problem is very multi-faceted, but I wanted to stick to the quote as best as I could.
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