The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth: Conclusion

 

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. (Romans 1:16-17 KJV)

“ . . . In classical Greek pornos frequently, even usually, refers to homosexuals.  Other passages, . . . very explicitly condemn homosexuals.  For many years, even centuries, the Church has had little cause to apply these prohibitions in cases of discipline, for there was little or no such sin within the Church, but now, in the end of the twentieth century, the apostate denominations are not only condoning unnatural vice, they even form homosexual congregations.”  Dr. Gordon H. Clark

 

The Free Offer of the Gospel, Common Grace, and Pragmatic Church Growth:  Conclusion

 

I grew up in a different time in the early 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s.  As a baby boomer, I lived through the time of the invention of the color television set, the personal computer, the internet, and the evolution of the modern cellphone.  The technological advances have been enormous.  The internet and computer Bible software have greatly enhanced the spread of information about theology, biblical studies, apologetics, and a host of other sources of information about the Christian worldview.  Unfortunately, the dark side of technological advancement is the applications of those technologies for disinformation, misinformation, and outright propaganda.  In my view, this undermines the doctrine of common grace because instead of advancing the kingdom of God on earth it has instead promoted compromise, shallowness, and misusing proselytization as a form of evangelism. 

Simply getting new members to join a church is not the same thing as the command given by Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20.  The imperative given there is to go into the world to all nations and to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  But does the church growth movement do that?  I am not the first to answer that question in the negative.  Church has become more about appeasing sinners than speaking the truth.  Church has become more about pleasing seekers with good entertainment than about worshipping God or hearing the unadulterated word of God preached.  Instead of putting God first and the people of God first, the pragmatists have undermined solid biblical teaching and book by book expository preaching to replace it with meeting the emotional, psychological, and felt needs of the unbelievers. This approach has even descended to the level of giving homosexuals a special status.  All sin is sinful and there is nothing special about sexual immorality, especially a sexual immorality that violates basic biological nature.  God created humanity as male and female.  Genesis 1:27.  Furthermore, God made Adam head over his wife, Eve.  Patriarchy troubles modern egalitarians, but this is what the Bible says. 

God is not literally a man, yet the Bible always addresses God by masculine titles.  God is our Father, and His Son is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit is not presented by male titles, yet the pronouns used of the Holy Spirit are always masculine, not neuter.  (John 16:7; John 14:16; John 14:26.  See also:  Got Questions:  Is the Holy Spirit a “He,” “She,” or “It,” male, female, or neuter?).

The Apostle Paul makes it perfectly clear that Christians are to shun those who refuse to walk in faith and who are caught up in sexual immorality:

6 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. (1 Corinthians 5:6-7 NKJV).

I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. 10 Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner-- not even to eat with such a person. (1 Corinthians 5:9-11 NKJV).

You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8 This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10 I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind; but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is. (Galatians 5:7-10 NKJV).

Moreover, this includes both those outside the church and those who are members of the visible church.  Although it is true that the Presbyterians are not naïve about whether or not a person who makes a profession of faith is truly regenerate or not, they do require that the person makes a public profession of faith before being baptized and joining the church.  In regards to children who were baptized in infancy, they must be catechized using the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and they must make a valid profession of faith and be confirmed before partaking of the Lord’s table.  Some Presbyterians have taken this to the extreme by taking a Lutheran view of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper.  But anyone familiar with church history can see that John Calvin reached a consensus with the Zwinglians on the sacraments called the Consensus of Tigerinus.  Calvin and the Zwinglians were in agreement in rejecting any sacerdotal powers in the waters of baptism or any real presence in the sacramental elements of bread and wine.  Instead, the true power of the sacraments was in being truly regenerate, having a genuine faith, and resting in the Gospel message of the word preached along with the sacrament.  Thus, it was more than just becoming a member of the church and partaking of the sacraments as some sort of magical real presence of Christ in the bread and wine.  Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the father of the English Reformation, also took a Zwinglian and Calvinist view of the sacraments.  His treatise on the Lord’s supper plainly says that the bread and wine are called by the names that they represent and that eating the tangible elements is a metaphorical and spiritual eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ.  Only a true believer can partake of the body and blood of Christ because faith is the necessary element that makes a person worthy to partake of the consecrated bread and wine:

WCF 29.8  Although ignorant and wicked men receive the outward elements in this sacrament; yet, they receive not the thing signified thereby; but, by their unworthy coming thereunto, are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, to their own damnation. Wherefore, all ignorant and ungodly persons, as they are unfit to enjoy communion with Him, so are they unworthy of the Lord's table and cannot, without great sin against Christ, while they remain such, partake of these holy mysteries, or be admitted thereunto. (Westminster Confession of Faith.  Westminster Standards.)

In the same way, in order to become a member of the visible church, one must be more than a seeker who is looking for something.  In fact, the Bible says that there is no such thing as a “seeker”.

As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; 11 There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. 12 They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.” 13 “Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit”; “The poison of asps is under their lips”; 14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 Destruction and misery are in their ways; 17 And the way of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:10-20 NKJV)

 . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (Romans 3:23 NKJV)

The pragmatic church growth movement turns the moral law and the Gospel on its head.  Instead of calling for repentance and faith, the pragmatists seek to appease unbelievers and entertain them with hypnotic contemporary praise and worship music which they have adopted from the Pentecostal/Charismatic style of worship.  There is a watered-down liturgy where a weak confession of sin is read and then a very weak corporate pronouncement of absolution.  The absolution is supposed to be a Gospel absolution, not a sacerdotal pronouncement of forgiveness as a power given to a priest or presbyter.  Of course, the church does possess the keys to the kingdom, but those keys are the preaching of the Word or Gospel message of the Bible and the right administration of the two Gospel sacraments:

1 The Lord Jesus, as King and Head of His Church, hath therein appointed government, in the hand of Church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate. 2 To these officers the keys of the kingdom of heaven are committed, by virtue whereof, they have power, respectively, to retain, and remit sins; to shut that kingdom against the impenitent, both by the Word, and censures; and to open it unto penitent sinners, by the ministry of the Gospel; and by absolution from censures, as occasion shall require. 3 Church censures are necessary, for the reclaiming and gaining of offending brethren, for deterring of others from the like offences, for purging out of that leaven which might infect the whole lump, for vindicating the honour of Christ, and the holy profession of the Gospel, and for preventing the wrath of God, which might justly fall upon the Church, if they should suffer His covenant, and the seals thereof, to be profaned by notorious and obstinate offenders. 4 For the better attaining of these ends, the officers of the Church are to proceed by admonition; suspension from the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper for a season; and by excommunication from the Church; according to the nature of the crime, and demerit of the person. (WCF 30:1-4, Westminster Confessional Standards).

According to the modern church growth model, seekers should be the emphasis, not the edification of the church as a whole.  Anyone who questions the shallowness of the preaching or the ameliorated preaching of the moral law is seen as a troublemaker and a disturber of the peace of the church. 

The Revoice movement, following the church growth pragmatic principle, seeks to downplay homosexuality so that “celibate” homosexuals can join the church while still “identifying” as “gay” or “lesbian” Christians.  This is allowing wickedness and immorality into the church.  As I said in an earlier blog post, a minister preached a fairly good sermon against wokeness just prior to the November general elections.  Then in the middle of the sermon he invited homosexuals to the church and said that they are welcome there.  Would he make the same offer to current adulterers or fornicators?  “If you’re here and you’re a whoremonger or an adulterer, you’re welcome in this church.”  (See: Hebrews 13:4 KJV).  I think not.  I strongly object to the Tim Keller and Gospel Coalition approach to evangelism.  I would go so far as to say that Tim Keller was a reprobate, not a true believer.  Those who follow Tim Keller’s church growth pragmatics do not deserve the name of Christian or even Presbyterian.  They are enemies of Christ.  Any church or denomination following that model is not planting churches.  They are planting apostasy and unbelief by accommodating to the culture of homosexuality, compromise, and concession to the enemy.

The church growth movement recommends reaching out to select groups of people of one cultural group or class.  So, most church plants are directed toward suburban middle class white people.  The reason for this is obvious.  First, they have good jobs and financial security and they are able to contribute to the financial needs of the church.  This undermines the Gospel because it makes the end goal the successful planting of a financially self-sustaining church.  Furthermore, the end justifies the means.  The church planter is using utilitarian ethics to accomplish a goal.  As I said in an earlier post, parachurch ministries and even church plants were focused on homosexuals, the end result of which was disappointing.  Instead of producing a church of true converts, the result was a church full of outwardly repentant and celibate homosexuals who still identified as homosexuals instead of moving on, getting married to the opposite sex, and having a family.  Even the pastor whom I wrote said that he did not expect the homosexual to actually be attracted to the opposite sex or get married.  But the Apostle Paul expected young widows to remarry instead of being busy bodies and gossipers making trouble in the church.  Only those with the gift of celibacy should remain single, according to Paul.  (See 1 Corinthians 7:1-9; 1 Timothy 5:11-15).

One Arminian based parachurch ministry based in Orlando, Florida dissolved the ministry after its president and leadership, all former homosexuals, recanted their conversion to Christ and went back to living in their immoral and perverse homosexual lifestyle.  (See:  Exodus International:  Religion News: Ex-gay group Exodus International shuts down, president apologizes).  The efforts to cause reprobates to believe the Gospel and be converted using worldly psychology and conversion therapy does not work.  The Bible says that it is God who converts the sinner, not persuasion or secular science pretending to be “Christian”.  It is the power of the Gospel message as it is enabled by the Holy Spirit which brings about the effectual call and repentance.  Only God can bring an elect sinner to the point of conversion.  Even here, the sinner is passive in regeneration and in the perseverance of the faith which results from regeneration.   (John 3:3-8; Jude 1:24-25; 2 Timothy 1:12; 1 Corinthians 1:8). 

I therefore oppose all business and corporate models for church planting.  My approach, should I ever plant a church, would be to preach the Gospel without fear of man’s opinions.  We are to please God, not man.  If it be God’s will, then the church plant will succeed without compromising the moral law or the Gospel.  (See Galatians 1:6-10 NKJV). 

I will close here with the full quote from Dr. Gordon H. Clark’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:8-13:

Although the case under discussion was one of incest [1 Corinthians 5:1-5], Paul uses the term “fornicators” (pornois).  Of course, incest is a kind of fornication, since a biblical marriage cannot there exist.  However, in classical Greek pornos frequently, even unusally, refers to homosexuals.  Other passages, for example, Romans 1:24, 26-27, very explicitly condemn homosexuals.  For many years, even centuries, the Church has had little cause to apply these prohibitions in cases of discipline, for there was little or no such sin within the Church, but now, in the end of the twentieth century, the apostate denominations are not only condoning unnatural vice, they even form homosexual congregations.  If these denominations were not apostate, if they were Christian, they would preach hell fire and warn these dregs of depraved humanity that against them the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, and perhaps by God’s grace induce them to cleanse their filth by the blood of Christ.

. . . In one’s everyday business, it is impossible to avoid all such associations.  . . . The command in 1 Corinthians, on the contrary, forbids the Church to have fornicators, homosexuals, incestuous persons in its membership.  The command also covers other sinners:  thieves and idolators.  Hodge remarks that this is the earliest known instance of the use of the word eidololatres.  Liddell and Scott give no earlier instance.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  First Corinthians. 1975.  Second edition.  (Jefferson:  Trinity Foundation, 1991). P. 84.

What changed?  What has changed is that theological liberalism and apostasy has taken over many, if not most, of the supposedly Evangelical churches, denominations, colleges and seminaries.  If we do not take a bold stance against apostasy, there could be only a small remnant of true churches left.  May God have mercy on us.

See previous posts here:  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.