Where is the Church Heading?

Maintaining both biblical standards and biblical grace
A fresh look at the role of leadership in guiding - not controlling - the flock into holiness

We are living in a unique time in Church history. There has never been lower Church attendance in recent US history than right now, and here are some staggering facts - in just the last two and one half years 7.5 million people have left the Church and no longer attend worship services. The number of people who associated with the Christian religion in 1983 was 93%, in 2014 it was only 79%. In 1983 53% of people attended worship services and in 2014 only 43%. And, lest you think this automatically means that all those leaving the Institutional Church have left God too, in 1983 54% said they pray daily and in 2014 57% say they do. This as reported by Arthel Neville from Fox News 3/23/2015. In other words believers are still praying but they are disillusioned with the traditional Church. Certainly many of those who have left have done so because the conservative bible believing Church has refused to cave in and support the Gay agenda and the doctrine of Tolerance, and some have left due to bitterness of experience in their Church, but if you believe this accounts for all of those who have left then you simply aren't in touch with the facts. Because of this pastors are being forced to rethink their approach to Church in the hopes of discovering keys that might lead to folks returning to their folds.

I believe that what people want at their deepest spiritual levels is more of Jesus and less of man centered focuses in the Church. Leaders tend to either swing from too much control to too much liberty because they fail to draw the people most essentially to Him. When Church is too much about law or too much about grace then on either side of the swing of this pendulum it has failed to center the people in Christ. Church was designed by Christ to be a place where people came together to know Him, share their experience with Him in their daily lives, to encourage others to come to know Him more, and walk more intimately with Him. Over time it has become about all kinds of other things, and in doing so it misses its truest commission to draw all men to Him. In this vacuum sin will always fill the gaps and as a result when ministers emphasize any doctrine or idea or program rather than emphasizing Jesus ultimately they are leaving their people exposed to the lure of sin and they don't even know this is what is happening. The discussion of Sin, Grace, and Law, in imbalances will leave the people more vulnerable to sin because of being less drawn to Jesus.

Years ago I traveled throughout the northwest United States, Canada, Malaysia, Australia, and Singapore trying to help pastors recognize their concept of Church leadership was unbiblical in many aspects...chiefly their concept of control and Church standards of behavior. Often this was very hard for them to digest. To them...the Church was theirs, they had absolute authority over the lives of those who called their Church home, and they believed that if they didn’t adequately control the lives of their flocks they’d have to stand before Christ and explain why they didn’t. This was a failure to comprehend the true meaning of Hebrews 13:17.

Hebrews 13:17  Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

More accurate translation: "Obey (as a result of being convinced and confident in the correctness and spirit of what is being counseled or taught ) your leaders (who are esteemed due to manifesting a gentle non-coercive servant's heart), and be submissive  (yield to the servant authority of those over you in the Lord, as unto the Lord ), for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.”

I always knew the excessive requirements for submission was little more than a ruse to control people towards securing their authoritative significance and increasing their financial security, but they couldn’t see it. Their eyes were too blinded to the mixed motives of their own hearts. They had been trained in and had handed down to them a concept of authoritarian oversight of their Churches and they weren’t going to have it any other way. My words were little more than akin to clanging pots and pans together from the pulpits of their leadership conferences. It’s interesting that now, in 2015, many leaders are recognizing that with the development of world cultures towards favoring less control, less legalism, and more tolerance, if they don’t take a fresh look at pastoral authority they are going to lose their entire Church. Their tension is...how do we honor the Lord’s righteousness with respect for the privacy of the priesthood of each believer? How do we warn our flocks of the dangers of sin without using a manipulating fear or heavy handed control methods?

At the end of the day there isn’t anything we as leaders can do to insure that our flocks won’t sin. No amount of fear or control can guarantee adherence to biblical standards of behavior. If it isn’t intimate relationship with Jesus that creates personal holiness then no amount of heavy handed leadership will create it.

Now, as time has gone by and millions of believers have left their churches, they are desperately reconsidering their approach and are beginning to teach more grace, less control, and a friendlier God. Grace to believe they are loved even if they aren’t perfect, less control over the people’s practices, beliefs, behaviors, and Church attendance, and a friendlier God than the One they had preached as being austere, harsh, controlling and fearful.

Don't misunderstand me...God is to be feared or revered as the awesome and mighty God He is, but in Christ He has far more effective means of securing obedience than just fear and coercion. They have realized their message was never biblical in the first place. But, is it too late for the millions who have left disillusioned? And, in our rush to secure numbers in our pews have we swung the pendulum too far to the other side of law that we are virtually guilty of encouraging sin because of over emphasizing grace with a failure to discuss the consequences of sin?

It is now popular to talk about more grace, less control, and a far friendlier God than we ever had preached 20 years ago. But, in so doing we risk swinging the pendulum so far to the opposite end of things that our message becomes equally errant.

Don’t misunderstand me...I’m pleased more grace, less control, and a kinder God are being taught. This is good and long overdue. But, if we give an inaccurate view of grace and sin on the nicer side of theology we run the risk of indirectly encouraging the body of Christ to embrace the doctrine of “Tolerance” the devil has been seeding every world culture with. There has become a massive acceptance of the Gay lifestyle, recreational Marijuana, sex before marriage, and an incredible appetite for materialism and hedonism among believers, and this should be more alarming to us than it seems to be. It seems almost daily I hear of the growth of the "Tolerance" movement...tolerance towards all kinds of practices the bible couldn't be clearer on its opposition to. It amazes me that so many within the Christian faith would buy into such abominations. I expect mainline Christianity to do this...they've proven they are sold out to worldliness in so many ways, but to hear that Evangelical/Bible believing Christians are going for it shakes me to the core.

Don't misunderstand me...I believe Jesus loves everyone within the LGBT community...He loves the whole world...but loving people and approving lifestyles are and always have been two very different things. For Jesus to support lifestyles that are perversions would be to have Him support the destruction of the human personality...how would that be loving? My heart goes out to the LGBT community but I'm not about to accept or tolerate a behavior that has proven to be so destructive to the human psyche. So, why are Evangelicals falling prey to this abomination? I think it all comes back to a flawed concept of Church and Church Leadership. Young evangelicals have been wounded by a false concept of Church and they want nothing to do with it, sooo, in a knee-jerk reaction to it they are emotionally open to an approach to morality that stands in clear opposition to what they consider to be religious bigotry. Such a reaction is indeed unwarranted, sad, and destructive, but I feel their pain and long for them to come out of false religious systems yet maintain firm commitments to true biblical principles of godliness in Christ.

Let’s be clear on things. First, God “in Christ” after the cross has opened His arms in an unprecedented way that was never imagined in the Old Testament. Having come to Christ there is absolutely nothing you can do that would convince Him to “unsave” you no matter how ugly your behavior is. He is gracious, kind, full of blessings, and merciful beyond imagination. He loves us and nothing is going to change that. BUT...if the following truths don’t find their way through the pulpits and mouths of God’s teachers the body of Christ is going to suffer the greatest deceptions since the beginning of time. Here is truth that MUST be clearly communicated to the entire body of Christ: While it is not the responsibility of pastors to control, fix, manipulate or fear trip the people of God, it is their responsibility to articulately explain the righteousness of God, how God has created His universe and the human psyche. While there may be no sin you can do that will make God love you any less than He does He has woven into the Universe and your Psyche realities of consequence. There are "real" wages that sin pays and they don't make a person psychologically healthier.

If we fail to realize there are consequences for sin that have nothing to do with God being mad at us we are going to espouse a tolerant and nice God to our own destruction. He may be nice but if we sin in the face of His niceness we will experience the entire Universe opposing us and our Psyches collapsing. God may not send us to Hell for lying, cheating, lusting, stealing, worrying, hating, or controlling but we will experience a huge personal toll for having done so. Nobody escapes the wages of sin, nobody escapes unscathed who wilfully participates in these things. Loss of joy, loss of peace, emotional collapse, relationship deterioration, emotional and physical addictions, etc will ALWAYS attend wilful sin and God being nice, amiable, kind, merciful, and forgiving will never change this fact. We need to hear Him saying to us “Look...you are forgiven in Christ and I’m always going to love you, but sin will ruin your lives if you continue in it, and that ruination will have nothing to do with Me rejecting you, punishing you, not forgiving you, or unsaving you.” Sin is a reproach to any people (Proverbs 14:34) and tolerance of it will always destroy, piece by piece, the life of anyone who indulges in it.

I’m even convinced that God does very little “first hand” disciplining of His children, and I'm well aware of Hebrews 12:6. But, if you think through Hebrews 12 you will notice it is "loving discipline" rather than "harsh/punishing" discipline . Why? Because it seems He has woven into the fabric of our psyches and the universe principles of destruction that develop incrementally in the life of anyone who flirts with sin. He generally doesn’t need to personally discipline us...sin will discipline us of its own. Don’t waste your time putting a grim, harsh, or manipulative image on God. He is “for you” even if you sin. But, sin isn’t as amiable...it will destroy you if you yield to its temptations. Sin will begin to work out its wages (Romans 6:23) in every aspect of our lives if we yield to it. It is the paymaster for every indulgence. No one escapes its wages. To yield to sin is to invite a developmental destruction into our lives. I’m not saying God is personally soft on sin. I’m sure He hates it as much as He ever has, and the death of Christ hasn’t changed that, but because of what Christ did He is freer to embrace us with a warmth of love, affection, and forgiveness than could ever have been experienced in the Old Testament. His heart is lavishly warm towards us and His deepest desires are that we embrace Him, His grace, His wisdom, and His strength to avoid sin and walk closely with Him.

So, while it is important for Church leadership to quit controlling, start preaching grace, leave room for the Holy Spirit to lead, guide, and mature His Church, we must be clear that this does not leave room for the expression of the flesh. Fleshliness is a killer! Sin is a killer! Tolerance of cultural sins is not a virtue...it is stupid, blind, and destructive.

The Bible is incredibly clear on the black sins of the flesh. From these we must completely remove ourselves. When it comes to the gray areas of sin each believer must be given room to sort those out in their relationship with God, and no Church should ever be allowed to dictate acceptance in their folds based on adhering to a pastor’s particular set of pet peeves of things he thinks should be considered black sins when the bible doesn’t indicate them clearly as being so.

You see...God is pretty smart...as obvious as that should be...and He knew He could have provided a grocery list of all the things that would ever surface in the history of mankind and in every world culture that He didn’t like...things that might hurt His people, but He didn’t. So why didn’t He? Because He wanted His people to learn to never take away the rights and responsibilities of the people to come to Him in deep relationship to discover what He thinks about any given gray area in life. To be sure there are truly gray areas. Not everything is black or white. As hard as that is to fathom for people like myself who would like life to be as simple as a reduction of all life’s moral decisions to pure blacks and white, much is truly gray and in those gray areas we must always encourage the body of Christ to walk intimately with the Lord to discover His leading in those areas. Freedom in Christ mandates this. To take this away from the body of Christ is to stilt their growth, kill their relationship with Christ, and teach them that all of life can be reduced to simple black and whites.

When Church leaders define a set of black and white Church standards of acceptance that they have no business in defining they merely reveal how insecure they are, how fearful they are that they will not be able to successfully control the body of Christ into doing what will make them feel significant and secure in their leadership rolls. They may tell themselves they do what they do to honor Christ but He knows the true reality...it has far more to do with them than about Him. It has far more to do with wanting something from their ministry that no one ought ever to seek from another human being. Church history is full of this kind of ugly manipulation. Our day is no exception to the history of this ugliness. Whether we look at the Inquisition, the Catholic system of control and domination, or the modern Evangelical Church with an overbearing Senior Pastor, a set of standards for acceptance in a given local Church, and the manipulative error of tithe teaching, it all partakes of the same root system of error. It is much more about leaders than it is about Jesus.

It is high time that we preach Christ as He is...preach of the true nature of Church...let grace have its day among believers, and learn to walk intimately with Jesus. The earth is reeling under the weight of millennia of errors in these areas. Believers have “had it” with it all and have voted with their feet and their pocket books. They won’t fund it, they won’t tolerate it, and they won’t submit to it, and this has absolutely nothing to do with being unsubmissive, irreverent, disobedient, rebellious or sinful. They just aren’t going to sit back any longer and encourage a form of leadership and Church that is more about man’s agenda than it is about Christ. They will either see Jesus or they won’t see anything in the Church. They will either be brought to His feet to hear from Him or they won’t be brought anywhere. They’re done with it and they won’t have it any longer...but neither should they going to become a liberated fleshly sinful bunch of people, who in expressing their freedom choose to liberally sin. Absolutely not. It is time for a Fierce Faith to emerge. One that won’t tolerate Church leadership manipulation and also won’t tolerate personal sin.

It is true that Jesus loves these leaders and teachers who lead and teach in false ways, and we would never deny that reality. It is true Jesus will love us even if we bury ourselves under a great weight of sin, but neither of these approaches must be allowed to prevail in the Church any longer. The way we no longer allow them is to come out of them ourselves. In so doing we lead by influence and example rather than by dictatorial control.

The world, without realizing it, is looking for a people who love the lost fiercely while fiercely hating sin. They know their sin is destroying them, but having found no reality in the Church has emboldened them to cast off the restraint even they know they need. The world has watched us over the centuries rip them off by religious practices and standards that have absolutely nothing to do with God and they are sick of it. They are running head long into unrestrained pursuit of sin partially because they have found no spiritual reality in the Church and are emboldened to destroy themselves in their rebellion. If the Church doesn’t recognize and repent for having pressured them into this direction we will have failed our commission to reveal Jesus for Who He really is and the Church for what it really is.

Let us come away from false religious systems and false tolerance of sin. Let us become the people of God we were called to be so as to truly honor Christ and present to the world an honest approach to Christ and His Church.

Your brother in the journey...
Tom Sparks