July 17, 2007
Labels
My uncle, now deceased, referred to himself as ‘Slop bucket Dutch’. In good natured fun my ¼ Choctaw Indian mother-in-law is called a gut-eater because she likes to eat the gristle off the chicken breast. Labels which once added color to a person’s character are stricken from our vocabulary because we’ve become so PC. I’ve noticed a similar thing happening to churches. We’re told that new titles and names are needed in order to appeal to a wider audience and depict the personality of the today’s modern church. Personally I think changing a church name for the sake of marketing gives a church an identity crisis and dulls the color of her true character.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Let’s look inside these two statements upon which the need for new titles and names have been positioned. “In order to appeal to a wider audience,” seems to be a desirable objective. I suppose everyone hopes their name or title appeals to a wider audience. Yet, names given to things have almost always carried some insightful reference to the essence of what the thing is. While the old adage, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” often holds true, you can almost always find the direct correlation between the content of a book and its title after you have read it. Vehicles are often named in respect to the niche they were created to fill, the character the creator wishes it to have, and the tastes of the people they are intended to serve. “Blazer,“ “Bronco,“ “Scout,“ and “Land Rover” are good names for vehicles that can do it on road or off. But they may not be fitting for the two seat roadster with only two inches ground clearance, nor for the posh leather seated sedan that glides like a cloud. That is because titles mean things. Like words, they are meant to convey a generalization that they can stand for in the mind of the user. And if the creators of the books and vehicles want to stay in the business of creating, they must not only give their products meaningfully accurate titles and names, they must be certain that their product delivers that meaning, and that it appeals to a large section of the market.
-----To “…depict the personality of today’s modern church,“ the fashioners of the contemporary church believe they must do the same thing. But if they wish to remain spiritually and intellectually honest, they face a dilemma. The personality of the church is not for sale. It does not live for an economic market, nor a religious market. Jesus Christ did not make the church to need a personality with broad mass appeal for its existence. He simply made the church for the truth which founds its existence. He made the church to be recognizable to those who would be inclined to receive the truth presented by His Word. So as the masses of humanity shift and change in their philosophies and desires, what the church is remains the same since the Word of God remains the same. To rename a church to attract the wandering horde deceives that horde if the church remains Biblically defined, or it deceives God if the church must be reshaped by the pressures of mere name appeal.
-----For markets are places where masses come to find the labels they want. The church was made to reflect reality into a dark world. It is Jesus’ lifeboat on a sea of sin. And there are only so many souls in this lifetime who will recognize reality. It is made to attract them, not the wandering masses who, looking for labels, see the name of Christ’s personality upon the church and reject it for some other falsehood they feel is more fitting to their wandering ways. In their organizations of deceit they salve their souls with twisted truths until they ride time on to an allotted destiny. It is sad, but it is real. Jesus told us, and we must not forget, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Mat 7:13-14) We can not change this truth by changing the name of the church.
Post a Comment