Throughout the Internet, the blogosphere, and books available at your local bookstore, there is numerous information about the ‘church-growth’, ’seeker-sensitive’, and the ‘purpose-driven’ crazes that seem to radiate more heat than light about the sordid state of the American church. Bill Hybels of Willow Creek told the late Peter Jennings in an ABC special on Christianity entitled In The Name of God that he started the church based on a poll sent out to the unchurched to find out what people did not want from a church. He found out that people did not like old fashioned sermons, and they were bored by traditional church music.
Where was God in this?
I really wonder. As I thought about this approach and related it to the mentality of pragmatism that is prevalent in many churches today, something dawned inside of me.
What the church growth, seeker-sensitive, people did was not hear and obey God, they repeated David’s Census and failed to see the consequences of repeating the census.
Repeating David’s census? Yes!!!
If you look at 1 Chronicles 21
, we see the entire story of David’s census. In fact the very first verse tells us what the root of the census was from.
Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.
This verse alone is very interesting. If you look at this in the realm of Israel as being God’s chosen people we see that Satan as being against the Christians but motivating the leader of the Christians responsible for guiding the people under their covering to count them. It’s tragic when we claim that we listen to God only but we end up listening to Satan and most of the time do what he wants instead of what God wants.
Thank you for an excellent post.
>Where was God in this?
And what happens when what people want changes yet again. Nothing gets old faster than over-relevance.
Example: What would Hybel’s church look like now if he started it during the heyday of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In? “Sock it to me, Lord!”