Confessing Evangelical: How Appealing Should the Church Be?
I missed the post, How Appealing Should the Church Be?, posted back in January 2006 by John at Confessing Evangelical . It ties in nicely with my later post, You can’t underestimate the value of a caffeine buzz and a good cupholder, critiquing a local megachurch’s efforts to be more appealing to potential worshippers. John writes:
Good stuff from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (via Conrad Gempf), on the subject of “the future of the church”:
The future of the church does not depend on youth but only on Jesus Christ. The task of young people is not reorganisation of the church but listening to God’s word; the church’s task is not the conquest of young people, but the teaching of the gospel.
A good reminder that the task of the church, and the purpose of mission and evangelism, is not to make the church, or Christianity, “appealing” - but to declare the gospel message of forgiveness, life and salvation in and through Jesus Christ.
It is then the Holy Spirit, not our appealing music, carpeted floors, Powerpoint projectors, spacious car parks and professionally-printed materials, who (in the words of the Augsburg Confession) “effects faith where and when it pleases God in those who hear the gospel”.
That said, it’s possible to go to the other extreme and operate on a false syllogism that says, “We are to be faithful to the gospel rather than attractive to outsiders; we are deeply unattractive to outsiders; therefore we are being faithful to the gospel”. Read on…
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