A battle cry for a dead church By Shane Idleman, for Christian Post
As I recently stated, America’s stage-four cancer is progressing at an alarming rate (you can read the prognosis here). The warning is dire, and the outcome looks hopeless. The signs of impending death are most evident in our pulpits and our pews:
- weakness and exhaustion from not obeying God’s Word.
- spiritually asleep, often spending most of the day consuming social media, Netflix, or the latest popular TV show.
- the loss of spiritual disciplines: Fasting is old-school, prayer is passé, church is outdated, and holiness is weird.
- minimal or no appetite for God; difficulty eating or swallowing absolute truth.
But be encouraged — God can heal our land, as well as our families and our churches, if we prepare the soil of our hearts. God heals and restores those who are “contrite and lowly in spirit” (Isaiah 57:15).
Healing Is Costly
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As with most things, there is a price to pay; there is a cost, and this cost often begins in the pulpit. Pastor, it may cost you popularity, status, and recognition. Prophetic voices are rarely popular, but they are powerful. God uses them to awaken a dead church.
A quote often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville helps to clarify my point. Even if you’d heard it before, you may need to hear it again. In short, de Tocqueville looked throughout America to find where her greatness originated — from her harbors and shorelines to her fertile fields and gold mines — but it was not there. In his words, “It was not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her success. America is great because she is good, and if America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” The pulpit greatly affects the pew and regulates the spiritual climate of our nation. It’s where the battle cry must begin.
Sugar-Coated Preaching Isn’t Healthy
I so appreciate pastors. For those who are truly called, it’s one of the hardest labors that man has never known. They carry the weight of the world on their shoulders as well as the burden of the Lord in their hearts. However, like addicts on a sugar binge, we have satisfied our carnal nature with candy-coated preaching, and we are paying the price with poor spiritual health. As with diabetes, the symptoms are clear: extreme hunger for the wrong things, unexplained spiritual weight loss, lethargy in seeking God, and blurred vision when it comes to biblical truth.
