The following article is by Pastor Mark Anderson, Lutheran Church of the Master Corona del Mar, CA
The religion of accommodation is everywhere today, and it shows. Seeker-friendly churches allow those who couldn’t care less about the church to define the church, jettisoning everything that resembles historic Christian worship in favor of the latest pop fad. Many mainline pulpits have become nothing more than stumps from which the latest political cause is trumpeted as the folks in the pews are admonished to care, and care deeply about the myriad plights of the world, as if that were the essential business of the Church. The religion of accommodation proclaims the false gospels of slick marketing, false optimism, uplifting self-help techniques, and a fussy do-goodism. It has no need for Christ, His cross, and His costly forgiveness.
God’s message of judgement and mercy to this pride-soaked world is not meant to make us feel good about ourselves, meet our percieved needs, or prop up our ideas of what we value as crucially important. God’s message – the entire scope of the biblical revelation – condemns the way we have broken His immutable law while at the same time announcing God’s decision to forgive us. And God forgives not because of us, or in spite of us, but because He chooses to forgive us out of His sheer goodness and mercy. “For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God – not because of works -lest anyone should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) The task of announcing God’s Word to this world must reflect an unflinching resolve to proclaim both the judgement of God’s law on each and all of us ( we have nothing to offer God towards our salvation) even as we proclaim the bloody cross and the glorious ressurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ as God’s merciful, compassionate response to our sin and rebellion (we are saved by God’s grace through faith alone for Christ’s sake).
The following quote from Gerhard Forde says it well;
” Christ is the end of the law to everyone who has faith. Christ is the only end. There is no other. That is the reason the treatment of the law can and must be so uncompromising. For where the law is watered down or jettisoned we come under the most diabolical illusion of all – that there is no longer any need for Christ. We must not take that road. What the church has to offer in all matters, is not accommodation, but absolution and a new life. That is the greatest service to the neighbor we can do. True, many today may find this to be of small comfort. But that may be only because they fail to realize how desperate the battle is.”
– Pastor Mark Anderson
Do you think that getting people in the door should be a consideration with respect to the types of worship practices that a church engages in?
– Steve M.
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