Making Disciples

I always look forward to engaging guests at Redemption Hill. Recently, I connected with a husband and a wife after church. I noticed they were engaged while I was preaching. Their Bibles were in their laps, and they were tracking what I was preaching. So after the morning service, I made a point to connect with them. First, I thanked them for coming. And then I asked what they thought of our church. They shared charitable comments. And then I said, “We are a church that will always choose substance over style.” The moment I said those words, their faces lit up as if I had given my wife’s homemade apple pie for the first time. They were delighted and intrigued.

I did not press on their church background, but common sense and a general understanding of Christian culture helped deduce a common trend. Within Christan churches, pragmatism is the preference over principle. You will hear in the sermon life stories, see movie clips, and the Bible is peppered in along the way. Feelings matter more than God’s truth. The smoke machine during worship is substituted for quality theology in the songs. How about this statement to make a point. COVID-19 is not a pandemic compared to the water-down theology in many local churches. God is being replaced to promote the self, causing people to spiritually die left and right because style is placed over substance. Within protestant circles, local churches are off mission. Here is a good reminder of why the local church exists. Our Lord said in Matthew 28, 

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.– Matthew 28:18–20

Ok. The church exists to make disciples. Got it. But Jesus did not stop at what the church is supposed to do. He told us what to do. When a person becomes a disciple of Jesus Christ, the church responds in two ways. First, the church is to baptize. Second, the church is to teach. In particular, elders teach (1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1). And Jesus is specific about what is taught to disciples of Jesus Christ. What Jesus commanded his disciples, those disciples are to teach others. 

Now let me ask a question. Are the majority of churches teaching what Jesus taught? Or is a two-minute clip from the Toy Story being used to communicate a nice moral, and then a passage of the Bible is used to supplement the moral? 

Posters in the Cafeteria

Allow me to elaborate on my point. One of the disadvantages of being a mobile church is that we are at the landlord’s mercy. In our case, it is a school district. Are there times when items are hung up in the halls, which I do not prefer? Absolutely. We are trying to facilitate church, not a 5th grade English class. But am I less concerned about the barely legible posters from a 2nd grader or the content of the songs and the sermon? I hope you get the point. Yes, every Sunday, the goal is to make the space look like a church then a school. But hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ is immensely more important than the orange poster hanging on the wall in the cafeteria. Don’t get me wrong. We want to continue to work toward creating a distraction-free environment. But the substance of what is taught will never be traded for style. 

Christmas Lights at Church

Here is an example of style over substance. What drives me bonkers is how gaudy some churches have become. Last week I drove by a large church in the Des Moine