It is that time of year to look back. Some
pastors and Churches don’t like to look back,
but want only to look ahead. But anyone who has read Louis L’Amour[1]
books knows that you must always look at your back trail to see if you are being followed and as a way of making sure
you’re going straight. I wonder if such pastors
and congregations who don’t want to look back have been influenced by evolution,
and thereby think there is nothing to be learned
from the past. They think we are somehow evolved
socially and spiritually, and we cannot learn from those who have gone on
before us. Still other pastors and congregations, frequently those who think
themselves to be conservative and old fashioned, look to the past, but they
look only to the recent past. This, of
course, limits them to seeing Christianity only since the deleterious effects
of Charles G. Finney’s decisionism and Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture have so
radically changed the face of American Christianity.[2]
Because they don’t look back far enough,
they think their approach to ministry is the way it’s always been done. How wrong they are.
Better
than looking only to the recent past would also be looking back to those times centuries
ago when God visited His people with revival and great numbers of souls saved,
times like the First and Second Great Awakenings. Those were times when sinners
were converted to Christ, and their
conversions changed the faces of nations, altering the course of human history,
and even bringing about the eventual end of slavery in the Western hemisphere.
But those were the effects of pastors and congregations who rightly saw their
duty and task before God to glorify Him
and to seek to bring individual sinners to Christ. If pastors and congregations
today would learn from those Puritans and old English and American colonies Baptists,
who were concerned with real conversions
and had no thought of generating big numbers for number’s sake, the state of
Christianity would be much improved.
Finally,
look way back. Look back to the Gospels and the book of Acts, when the Lord
Jesus Christ issued His Great Commission,
and men acted upon His directive. Is there any indication that the Lord Jesus
Christ wanted His early disciples to do anything other than make disciples? No.
Therefore, let us not change the ancient landmarks.[3]
Modern day pastors and congregations explain away the vast difference between
what Jesus Christ commanded and what they do by saying, “the culture is so much
different, and we are adapting to the culture.” To be sure, the culture is
different. And we should adapt to the culture. But differences in the culture
do not cause differences in the basic nature of sinful men. Neither do they
justify in any way an alteration of Bible doctrine or Gospel ministry.
[1]
Louis L’Amour, nicknamed “America’s storyteller,” was an American novelist and short story writer of primarily of
Western novels.
[2]
As Charles G. Finney adversely influenced Christian evangelism in the young
United States of America, so was the Sunday School movement in this country
damaged by Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture, (Cleveland, Ohio:
The Pilgrim Press, reprinted from the 1861 edition in 1994), page 33.
[3] Deuteronomy 27.17; Proverbs 22.28; 23.10.
