More Than One Way for a Church to Go Wrong

The Arkansas Times website has an article up called "Arkansas' First Church". It compares and contrasts the first church to be founded in Little Rock, First Presbyterian, with the one that is first in number of congregants- Fellowship Bible Church of Little Rock.

We all have our biases, some admit to them and some don't. The style of the piece makes pretensions to convey a bias-free comparison of the styles of the two churches but comes off as a ham-handed attempt to make First Presbyterian look good and Fellowship Bible Church look bad. Because the truth is the "straight and narrow" and truth by nature is exclusive of other paths, there are a lot more ways to go wrong than there are to stay true to one's Godly calling. It is almost as if the Almighty designed the world so that one must be careful to stay in relation to Him in order to choose the right paths. Going astray is easy. Doing the right thing is hard, and you usually only wind up dong it for love's sake.

At any rate, the article made much of Fellowship's $54 million new facility with its theme-park style center for children. To be fair it also talked about the lavish organ First Presbyterian church provided for itself.

Now I can't find anywhere in the Bible where it was God's idea to build a building for the purpose of worshiping Him. There are lots of things that we are commanded to do with our tithes and offerings, buildings just weren't one of those things He commanded us to do.

I've seen religious ambition ruin more than one ministry. They really want to help people, but not as bad as they want an imposing church building or a majestic organ. I have found that nothing is harder than loving people, if your desire to do that is conflicted by desires for other things then the weeds of life choke out the fruit of the word. Still, having those things are not wrong in themselves. If you have to have a big fancy church facility, putting a lot of resources into children sounds like something Jesus would want us to do.

The problem is not the facilities, but the way they are used and what effect they can have on our ability to proclaim God's truth unhindered. Especially when there is a lot of debt, preachers are pressured to compromise their message so that they don't offend anyone. Those seats need to be full with people who will help pay the bills! What starts off as a resource to help minister God's truth becomes an albatross around ministerial necks that hinders people from preaching the truth when the truth becomes unpopular.

Right now my concern is that the "Emergent Church" heresy is infecting wanna-be-hip mega churches like FBC. This particular heresy teaches that "the journey" is more important than the destination, that the role of the church is tilted more towards meeting felt needs and therefore less toward proclaiming Divine truth. Such thinking is very appealing to pastors, since as "Shepard" they are the leaders in the journey and they can't be questioned on the direction to take the flock. After all, its all about "loving one another on the journey", where they are heading to is incidental in this view. It also lets them off the hook of doing what men of God have been called to do throughout the pages of the Bible- proclaim divine Truth even when it is unpopular.

First Presbyterian comes off no better. The article talks about how pastor "Flash" Gordon spends a lot of sermon time critical of the city for using taxpayer money to help finance high-profile business projects- so far so good- instead of the government using taxpayer money to address the problems of the poor and homeless.

Now I am all for preachers condemning theft, even when done by guys in nice suits and ties. The city has no business using taxpayer money to prop up some business ventures at the expense of others (and the taxpayers). Where I part company with Flash is that the city should not be spending it on the things he wants- they should be returning it to the people who originally earned the money. Flash should encourage First Presbyterian families to help these people directly because that is what a New Testament church is supposed to do.

Just like I can't find a scripture where it was ever God's idea to build a worship building, I can't find one where He ever advocated building a government program to help poor people. He commanded us to do it as individuals, families, and churches. That is a lot harder than nagging the government to spend OPM on the problem. You have to get your hands dirty with loving hurting people that way, but once again He seems to make the right way in this life the difficult way. I believe He knows what He is doing.

We should pray for pastors and church leaders, and support those who stay faithful and rebuke those who do not. They have a great many temptations in these troubled times where people want their ears tickled. There are so many ways to depart the path of life.