What Has The Church Become?

What has the church become?

This has been on my mind now for a while, but as I'm sitting here thinking, it bothers me even more.  What has the church become?

I often wonder what missionaries think when they come back to America from overseas.  They have been reaching out to people that have never heard the name of Jesus before.  They do not even know that there is anything outside of what their culture has always believed and then all of a sudden the seed of the Gospel is planted.  These missionaries go to these people and preach the Gospel even to the point of losing their lives.  Not just their lives back home in America but sometimes even their physical life on this earth.  Why?  Because they believe that Christ is worth it.

I have been overseas doing mission work.  The most basic of places where worship is truly that...worship.  It is not about the music.  It is not about the building.  It is all about God.  I remember when I first went into one of the townships in South Africa and the missionary saying, "Look for the tent."  Why were we looking for a tent?  I thought we were going to a church...

We were...

As we stepped out of the car and into the dirt road where the church was "parked" that week my world in America was confronted with the real world.  These people could meet anywhere.  They could meet outside in the elements, in a tent, or if they were lucky even a small building.  They did not care about the structure, they cared about singing praises to God.  And when they sang...it wasn't about the music, it was about the joy one felt in the salvation that God had given to them.

I know that the established churches throughout the world still live in what is called the Constantinian Era.  We no longer sing Psalters, but now we prefer to have professional musicians sing to us.  Instead of opening the Word and truly seeking to hear from God, we simply rely on a thirty (or if we're lucky a twenty) minute sermon to fill us until the next gathering.  What has the church become?

Recently, I got to listen to a man that was a missionary to China.  We could not learn his real name, but got to hear of the work being done overseas in the name of Jesus.  But, before he even got up to spoke I was ashamed of what I saw.  This man, who had seen people arrested (maybe even his friends) in the name of Jesus was now sitting back in America and what did he get?  A show.  The lights were blazing, the band was rocking, the entertainment had arrived...but was God really there?  I sat in the back ashamed of what I was witnessing.  A man of God who had given his life to share the Gospel of Christ to those who had never heard it and here he was in the middle of our entertainment culture.  Instead of going therefore and making disciples of all nations, we were trying to entertain people into coming back week after week.  Instead of truly making disciples, we were making consumers.  People who wanted to be entertained, who wanted a good show.  Is that the church?  Is that really what the church has become?

At what point will the church become the Church again in America and around the "civilized" world?  When will we realize that worship comes from the heart, not a light-show and band, not even a great preacher, and especially not the videos we play to keep the attention?  When will we realize that people are dying and going to an eternity without Christ while we are comfortably entertained in our shallow Christianity?  What has happened to the church?

Preaching Christ Crucified,

Rev. Timothy R. Stokes


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P.S. I am reposting this from about a month ago.  I was censured last time, but not anymore.  The Truth is the Truth.