Saturday, April 9, 2011

Renewing the church without evangelism? Not likely.

There is an article on the FTE website that offers some steps to renew the church. I have to admit, I found myself agreeing with a few of the points the author made, but the article was pretty condescending toward evangelicals. And there was one suggestion that I found quite troubling: "Remind yourself that you don't have to take God to anyone. God is already with everyone. So, rather than taking the approach that you need to take the truth out to people who need it, adopt the approach that you need to go find the truth that others have and you are missing. Go be evangelized."

Surely there is a need for Christian humility (which many Christians have embodied in the long history of our faith). Nevertheless the implicit claim in this statement is that the basic truths of Christianity--that God created and loves the world, that human beings live in ways that are inconsistent with God's will, that Christ died on the cross that we might have life, that God raised Jesus from the dead, that we have a new life in Jesus Christ--either are not true or don't matter. Sorry, but that doesn't seem to be a recipe for renewal to me. This sounds like the same brand of relativism that is killing "mainline" Protestant churches.

You can see the whole article here.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the article, comes in handy since I'm taking a class on the Foundations of Church Renewal with Dr. Vickers. So according to the article we should change Matthew 28:19, 20 into saying, "Go therefore and be made disciples, be baptized by all, and be taught by them."

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