Another Korby gem. . .

Korby pulled another gem out of his mind in this one and nailed it to the wall:

The baptistification of our society and religion has nurtured the flesh with religion.  The Old Adam has grown healthy under it – especially when it links itself to evangelism and church growth programs.  It is the Spirit that gives life, says Jesus.  The flesh cannot.  Whatever is produced by the flesh is of no avail. . .  That which is neither animated by the Word of Christ received in faith nor under the dominion of that Word. . .   We have learned to handle God’s Word and Supper in order to achieve the goal we have laid out for it.  There were over 5,000 people present at the beginning of John 6 and before long they wanted to make a decision for Christ that He should become their King.  And when He fled them, they chased Him.  They seemed to want to do the work of God.  And they prayed, “Give us this bread always!”  But in the sermon of Jesus, as it becomes plainer, their ardor cools off.  Then it turned to grumbling and, finally, they all leave.  There are twelve left at the end and Jesus thinks they might leave, too.  But we have found a way to resolve that problem.  Growth and reaching out can be done better.  We have found a way to keep the crowd.  

I fear he is exactly right.  I know he is.  I live within that tension.  Every pastor does.  Every pastor worth his salt not only knows that tension but daily asks the probing questions related to it.  Jesus, for all that He could, could not keep the crowd.  In fact, He does not seem to even regret that they leave Him complaining of not enough attention to their needs or wants, not enough time for them to wax eloquent about their wants and needs, and preaching and teaching too difficult for them to easily digest, comprehend, or stomach.  

John 6 is a paradigm of the problems we face in the Church today.  We have found a way to keep the crowd and one up Jesus.  Except that people are still leaving.  No matter that we have surrendered morality to whatever seems right in the mind and in the moment of the people.  No matter that we have gutted truth and made it more about the feeling or conviction of the believer than anything of power or life in the speaker.  No matter that we have made worship as culturally friendly and consumer oriented as possible.  No matter that we have castrated the pastors and bishops and turned them into shopkeepers and paper pushers.  People are still leaving.  So confused we are and so confident in what we are doing, we do not even see it that we have abandoned Christ in the pursuit of relevance and still the churches are empty of people and substance, truth and life.  But we think we have cracked the nut and found a way to keep the crowd.  So we keep doing what we have been doing.  We treat evangelism as if it were a committee, teaching as it is were a program, worship as if it were outreach, and truth as if it were up to the individual.   

H. Richard Niebuhr said it well.  "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross."  This is the word of the Lord?!?  The Church is not dying because we have preached faithfully the Word of God and it has failed to do what God promised.  The Church is dying because we have failed to preach the Word of God and still blame God for withholding His promise.  As a Lutheran, it is not Lutheranism that people are rejecting today but the non-fat, low cal, gluten free, dairy free, non GMO Gospel that we tell people is Christ and the whimsical worship that befits such a tasteless fake food.