Is the Church Supposed to Attract the Lost?

Tom: You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

If you’re a new listener or viewer to Search the Scriptures Daily, we’re currently doing a series on the emerging church movement in this first segment of our program. It’s a relatively new trend within evangelical Christianity, and its growth is rather phenomenal. It’s directed primarily at those between the ages of 18-30, many of whom were turned off by seeker-friendly and purpose-driven churches that they were a part of.

In reading a great deal of the writings of the emerging church leaders, there are many common beliefs and practices that we believe are not only unbiblical, but antibiblical, and the distinction between those two terms is that by “unbiblical” we mean an activity or practice where there is no biblical basis, yet it’s rather innocuous. For example, selecting the name of your fellowship that doesn’t put believers off, or intimidate them, that’s recommended within the emerging church movement. I’ll give you some examples. Rather than First Baptist, or Church of the Nazarene, or Trinity Lutheran, or Calvary Chapel, names that sound denominational or too traditional, they would avoid. They would rather go by titles such as Mars Hill, Solomon’s Porch, The Rock, Icon, Jacob’s Ladder, or Mosaic. And by antibiblical, we are referring to beliefs and practices that are contradictory to what the Bible teaches, and these range from the delusions of men to the doctrine of devils.

Now, Dave, let’s begin with an idea that’s very basic to the emerging church movement, that the church needs to be reinvented to attract the lost. Now, is it a function of the church to attract the lost?

Dave: Well, Tom, if it is, it is something that came up recently. It’s not in the Bible. As we read the Book of Acts, we read about the early disciples. It says they went everywhere preaching the Word. They went out and won people to Christ, and they became part of the church, and that’s how the church grew. But the church didn’t grow by inviting the unsaved into the church. I don’t read of that in the Bible. They went out proclaiming the Word of God, and the Scripture says, “The Lord added to the church such as were being saved.”

Tom: So, the church, then, the function of the church, according to the Scriptures, is to disciple—that once a person gets saved, they come into the church, they are taught the scriptures, they are discipled, equipped to be used of the Lord, and so on. But you are not dealing with unbelievers that you’re trying to keep them in, or get them to come to know Christ, or revamping your whole church to make sure that they are like consumers, that you’re pleasing them, you’re not offending them, and so on.

Dave: But that’s what we are doing today, Tom. The church growth movement is based on the premise that if we can just change the approach of it to appeal to these people who don’t go to church, find out why you don’t go to church, and so forth… Well, Tom, it sounds like we’re suggesting something radical. I mean, church is going to be something for the saints. It’s going to be Bible teaching and worship, but you invite in unsaved people, and then—oh, here comes the worship team. “Well, let’s get into worship now everybody.”

I’m not trying to be critical, Tom, and I know that this is the way it has been forever. I grew up in a fine evangelical church, and we have our gospel meeting every Sunday evening. Now, of course, that was a little bit better, because we knew that we were bringing in unsaved people. And I can remember during the second World War, I was about to get involved myself, but before I did, I was a little bit under the age—maybe I was 15, 16—and we had some army camps. We had a March air base, “Camp Haan” I think it was called. We had a number of camps, and we would go out and either have a meeting, gospel meeting on the camp. Even if we did, then we would invite a truckload or two of GIs coming to our church then that evening and preaching the gospel.

Tom: But they had received the gospel, many of them, prior to coming, right?

Dave: Well, you’re talking about had they been born again, come to faith in Christ? Some had, but we were actually trying to get the unbelievers and bring them to what we called the gospel service. It wasn’t that we were trying to change our Sunday morning worship service to appeal to the unsaved. I don’t believe that that’s biblical at all.

Tom: On the other hand, Dave, we’re not saying that if you have a neighbor and they want to come to church with you, then you say, “Oh no, sorry, this is for believers only.” But when it becomes a massive program, when it becomes almost a marketing event, a methodology of how to win these people over by revamping your church, that’s not biblical as far as I know.

Dave: Absolutely not. Well, why should we always try to be biblical? Isn’t that a bit narrow-minded? Well, what is it we learn about Jesus Christ? What do we learn about apostles, and disciples, and the gospel, and the church? That’s from the Bible. It doesn’t change, and this is our guide, sound doctrine. So, we should go back to the Bible.

See, these people are wanting to reinvent the church. No, I think we need to get back to the biblical church. And they would say, “Yes, but that’s old-fashioned.” Well, we dealt with that in our last program. Now, old-fashioned? What do you mean old-fashioned? We’re just the same as they always were.

In fact, the Scripture says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart.” But it also says—Solomon wrote, “As in water, face answers to face.” That is, your face reflects itself in water if it’s a good, still pool. “So the heart of man to man.” In other words, all of our hearts are the same.

Now, if it was true then, it’s true now, and the hearts of men and women today are no different from what they were then. So, we need to get back to the Bible, back to the beginning of our faith, build upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

Tom: And, Dave, what we’re trying to do here is just show in this movement that is growing like wildfire—as I mentioned, you know, we’ve seen it all over the world. Places that we’ve been outside of this country it’s there; it’s rampant in this country. What we’re trying to point out is, or at least ask the question, are these things that they are trying to implement, are they biblical or not? And we don’t want the audience to take our word for it; we want them to search the Scriptures to see if these things are so.

Now, some of the emerging church writers not only want to attract the lost—we mentioned in earlier programs that to some degree this is an offshoot of the seeker-friendly, seeker-sensitive. You could say, “Well, what way? I thought they rejected that and they wanted something more authentic, more spiritual?” But you see that as it developed in many conservative churches it was, “Well, let’s do something different for the youth in order to keep them in, to attract them, to keep them going.” So it’s very consumer oriented, just as the seeker-friendly movement was.

But the problem that I hope our audience is seeing is that they are doing things that are—I hate to use the word, or the phrase “push the envelope,” but they are getting so far beyond what the Bible… As I said at the beginning, many things are unbiblical, but many things are antibiblical, and they are evil, I think.

Well, let me give you a quote: “Are they indeed not only trying to attract the lost but going beyond that? Yes, they are. They are trying to learn from the lost.” How about that! Again, we’re using Roger Oakland’s book Faith Undone, which we offer here in the ministry. It’s an excellent book on this subject if you are not familiar with the emerging church.

There’s a book titled Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. Dave, this is by two professors from—guess where? Fuller Theological Seminary. That’s not surprising. Why would I say that? Well, they have been the leaders in promoting so-called “Christian psychology” and psychology. Their mission department has just been into everything imaginable and unbiblical. John Wimber, when he was alive, along with C. Peter Wagner (we mentioned him last week), they did a signs and wonders series there. I mean, you couldn’t go farther awry, I think.

Well anyway, this is what these men write… Well, first they give a quote from an emerging church leader in England, and he says, “Evangelism or mission for me is no longer persuading people to believe what I believe, no matter how edgy or creative I get. It’s more about shared experiences and encounters. It’s about walking the journey of life and faith together, each distinct to his or her own tradition and culture, but with the possibility of encountering God and truth from one another.”

Dave: Well, on the one hand, Tom, that sounds fine. We want to encounter God and truth. But…

Tom: He comes on a cloud, or maybe it’s in the color of a rainbow.

Dave: Which you had better get it from the Word of God under the teaching of the Holy Spirit. But go ahead, Tom, I think there’s more to read there. Where are they taking us now?

Tom: These guys also quote, “Christians cannot truly evangelize unless they are prepared to be evangelized in the process. In sharing the Good News, people are enriched by the spiritual insights, honest questions, and depth of devotion demonstrated by those of other faiths. Including others involves listening to them, learning from them. Much of what exists in other faiths may not necessarily be hostile to the kingdom. Christians can learn a lot from other walks of life.”

Dave: Well, it depends on—what does he mean by “other faiths”?

Tom: Well, he’s talking about anything and everything that’s out there. The community, many cases among these emerging church communities, they invite in Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, whoever it may be, to learn about their religions.

I’ll give you another example. This is from Spencer Burke, who has a website called “The Ooze.” Now, he was a pastor at the very large evangelical church in Southern California, so he speaks evangelicalese. He writes, “The Christian tradition could hold to an inclusive model [in other words, not exclusive, we should be more open], not an exclusive one. We have a community hermeneutic.” “Hermeneutic,” meaning that’s how we understand the Bible, interpret the Bible—Bible interpretation. “We read other sacred writings, then get back to the Scripture and decide together how to interpret what we have read from the literature that other religions hold to be sacred.”

Dave, this ship has left the dock, its compass is whacko, and it is heading way off mark big time, I think.

Dave: I thought we were supposed to learn from the Bible? I thought we were supposed to learn from the Lord? Has that gone out of fashion, somehow?

You know, Tom, I’ve probably said it before, but I’m just thinking back in my mind, I can see myself as a little boy, 5-8, and then older, as well—we didn’t have any of this stuff. I mean, I can see myself raising my hand—this was Bible questions. We knew the Bible, we learned from the Bible. We didn’t even have any Sunday school materials that some publisher put together; we just went to the Word of God. And to say that, well, young people are different now—maybe they are, different because of all the distractions that they have from television and everything else.

Tom: Entertainment, I mean, that’s come into the church so heavily in order to help them learn the Bible, supposedly.

Dave: Tom, as I look back…well, let’s see, the one thing we did have, the man who led me to the Lord, he had a lot of what he called “object lessons.” Like there might be a door, you know, you might have a door that he built himself, and it might have something written on it, or who knows what. That was our big entertainment. But it wasn’t designed to entertain us, it was designed to teach us. And it sounds to me as though these emerging church leaders, they are not interested in what the Bible says anymore. They want to know, What does modern man think? And what can we do to attract modern man? And that is not the route to take.

Tom: Dave, I like to look to the way God did it. It seems to me—we look at the Old Testament; we look at God dealing with the Israelites. He gave them instruction, and instruction, and instruction. He didn’t say, “Well, let’s see, what can we learn from the Philistines? What can we learn from this group or that group? Let’s all get together, we’ll have some conversation, and we’ll decide what’s the best of all of this.”

The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, it seems to me, is a book of instructions. Now, that’s a little hard to take for this so-called postmodern generation, because they are not interested in authority. They are not interested in being told what to do. But we’re talking about God teaching us, God telling us these things. And obviously, this isn’t good enough for this approach for many of these individuals, leaders within the emerging church movement. It’s just not good enough.

Dave: Well, apparently God didn’t know about this new modern age, or modern people.

But I’ll give you an example, Tom, from the book. This is from Doug Pagitt from his 2003 book Church Re-imagined. The Bible has nothing good to say about imagination, but we’re going to re-imagine it. He describes his initial attraction to rituals associated with the Eucharist (it’s a Catholic term). He said, “The first day of Lent this year brought the first Ash Wednesday gathering in our church’s history and in mine. Until this point, Ash Wednesday had not been part of my Christian faith and experience. Not only had I never applied ashes to anyone’s forehead, but I had also never had them applied to mine. After this experience I wondered how I could have celebrated 19 Easters as a Christian without this tremendous experience.”

Well, Tom, that leaves me kind of cold, actually. Now, you were Catholic. You had ashes applied to your forehead?

Tom: Of course.

Dave: Tell us about Ash Wednesday. What was that all about?

Tom: Well, again, “Remember, man, that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.” So there was a biblical basis for it, but it was a ritual. And when you have rituals, more often than not they turn to superstitions. Some people would keep them on forever, wouldn’t wash that part of their head, because they felt that there was a power within it, and so on.

Now, it leaves you cold, Dave, because you didn’t have these kinds of things. You looked to the Word of God. But we are seeing the evangelical church, not just the emerging church movement, move into… Now, I’ve been saved out of the Catholic Church for 30 years, and I’m seeing all over things that were Catholic now being presented by evangelicals, modified a little bit. For example, the Stations of the Cross, one of the most sacred rituals within Roman Catholicism, it’s big within the Emerging Church Movement, but even in youth groups. They have—well, we have 12…no, we don’t have the 14. We don’t have Saint Veronica, and you know, this and that, but I am seeing Roman Catholic ritualism crop up everywhere within conservative evangelical Christianity.

Dave: Yeah. Now, what about ritualism? What’s wrong with ritualism? Well, I’m somehow going to get to God by some ritual? Is He pleased with that? Does this impress God?

Tom: Is it going to make you more spiritual?

Dave: One of the leaders in here, Tom, you might remember which one, he tells about how the first time he made the sign of the cross. He says, “Wow, what an experience this was!” I don’t find that in the Bible. I do find two ordinances in the Bible. They are not rituals. They have very deep significance. One of them is baptism. I’m going to offend some people out there, but the Bible says, “Philip and the Ethiopian went down together into the water.” And John 3, it says, John the Baptist was baptizing in Eden near Salim “because there was much water there.” Now, if all we are doing is just sprinkling, I don’t think you need much water for that, and I don’t think you have to go down into the water to get yourself all wet.

The Bible talks of baptism, Romans 6: “We’re buried with Christ by baptism into his death.” Because, as Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me—the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

So baptism is symbolic of being buried: I am dying with Christ, and I’m buried with Him, and I’m going to rise in new life. And you don’t just sprinkle a little bit of dirt on a dead body, you really do bury them. So there is an ordinance that has some deep meaning. It only happens once; you don’t get baptized again and again.

Tom: But, Dave, in deep meaning, do you mean that there is something more spiritual here, something that’s efficacious that’s going to affect you spiritually?

Dave: No, I’m talking about the meaning of this, not the—there’s no power in this thing; it’s not going to do anything for you. You go into the water a dry sinner, you come out a wet sinner, and that’s about it.

Tom: But in obedience, obedient to the words of Christ, right?

Dave: Yeah, but I’m talking about people—if you are not saved and you’re looking to baptism. Because, as you know, the Catholic Church teaches infant baptism, baptismal regeneration.

Tom: Some of the Reformed denominations, also.

Dave: They do. And going back to Acts 8, the Ethiopian said to Philip, “Here is water. What would hinder me from being baptized? Why can’t I be baptized too?” Philip says, “Oh, that’s great, yes, come on.” Philip says, “If you believe with all your heart, you may be.” So, baptism is for believers. A baby hasn’t believed, and you must really be born again, believe with all of your heart.

And then we have the breaking of bread—take the bread and the cup in remembrance of Christ’s body that was broken for us, and His blood that was poured out. Now, this has a deep meaning, but it’s not all these other things—Ash Wednesday, and I don’t know what all they’ve got.

Tom: And it’s called sacramentalism.

Dave: Yeah, what they call the “smells and bells,” I guess—the candles and so forth. That is being brought now into the emerging church. And I don’t know what they’ve done with the ordinances, but they think something else is needed along with it.