January 08, 2008
Exodus
One of the Presbyterian churches in my town are losing members en masse. While my church is also experiencing loss, ours seems to be a slow trickle of only a few members at a time. A friend who attends this particular Presbyterian Church told me this morning that they did have some new people in their worship service last Sunday. We both tried to stifle a chuckle. In truth, there is a huge probability the visitors at her church are transients from my church. If people are going to leave a church, I’d rather see a mass exodus than to see members slowly slipping out a side door. I think an exodus just might send a wake up call to the leadership… at least it made Pharaoh sit up and take notice.
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Gail;
-----I believe sincerely that it is for man to try hard, but it is for God to measure his success. I believe this principle extends beyond measuring success on the mission field, getting the gospel through to the neighbor, or fulfilling the hunger needs with soup lines. This truth permeates our lives. It reaches into our physical accomplishments, into our spiritual knowledge and understandings, and into simply how we treat our fellow man. Not one of us is even near perfect. To be sure, we are so far short of perfect that the Lord Himself compares our best deeds to filthy rags. Should we, then, think any better of them? Should we be so sure that what we do is so on the mark that we can comfortably live without awareness of the smell of our own rag filth in our own nostrils? If we proudly do our deeds being unwittingly oblivious to such stench, then what accuracy should the Lord expect of the scales by which we measure?
-----But measure his own deeds man does! So Baptists measure themselves closer to truth than Seventh Day Adventists, who of course have had themselves spotted on the mark more accurately than all Christendom. If you’re not Pentecostal, then you’re missing some element of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t go to the Church of Christ, then God will get you for using musical instruments in worship. And I suppose if you are not Methodist, God won’t be happy because you lack whatever method they use. We all have ourselves measured up pretty close to the truth. And when I was attending your church, I cringed at the idea of attending church elsewhere, within some denominational structure. I understood then, and still do now, that if my righteousness is no better than filthy rags, it at least is going to my own best attempt, not some other person’s brand of rag sold to millions of others and all creeded up into some denominational cliché. At your church, I was at least able to be off the mark with a little individualistic, personal flare! Bein’ that your church was autonomous, and all.
-----But now that I have been attending one of the Presbyterian churches in town, and seeing what sort of rag stench there is causing evacuation from there, I have been able to compare it with the familiar scent that led to the great atrophy of your church. Although all problems, in church and out, are caused by the disobedience of man, the problems at this Presbyterian church came at it from a different angle than they did at yours. Although the similarity is in that some men think their own insights are for everyone else to obey (Rom 14:22), the difference is that in your church the problem was brought from men within, but in this Presbyterian church, the problem has been pressed upon it from men above. In your church, men were able to secretly spy it out and sabotage it’s autonomous authority to seize control for themselves and tell everyone else how God should be approached. Many left over that error. In this church, however, men in the authority structure above it are trying to seize control over the guiding principles of all the Presbyterian churches. Same problem, different angles.
-----The reason people have left here is that they felt the response to the lefty lean in the denominational pinnacle must be sharper and more definitive than it has been. They measured the rightness of rejecting the initiatives from above to be greater than would allow for patience and diplomacy. Thus, many thought that the error of the denominational top rose to the level of broken fellowship. But the leadership of this local church decided upon a carefully measured, more patient response. And my heart had to go out to them, because they did not insist they were absolutely correct. They acknowledged the inherent problems in a patient, measured response, as well. They acknowledged the problems with a quick and sharp response. And they acknowledged the benefits of both. They spoke openly with the people concerning the issue, and they did not try to hide it, claim its non-existence, nor lie about those who were adamant. Certainly, though, they admitted, and lamented, that exodus from the church would result from whatever could be done. These poor leaders were deer in the headlights merely because of the bright and shining stars of godly righteousness pomping down upon all from some pinnacle above. Whether the leaders dodged to the left or to the right, they were to be run down by the exodus for simply being in the road for the Lord. They never acted like God gave them a vision by which anyone else must do this or must do that. Rather, they admitted the disgust of the situation. And everyone has acknowledged the problem of the men upstairs, who have measured themselves as bright.
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