Monday, August 06, 2007
Restoring Credibility
Back in June, MMI linked to a story about a Gallup poll reflecting an increasing lanck of confidence in the church as an institution. Money quote from the story:
Batterson's comments are misdirection and designed to perpetuate the kind of "front" that allows the crap that caused the precipitous fall to show up to begin with. The problem isn't the message, the problem is making the REALITY OF THE MESSAGE apparent.
Simply put, the church lacks credibility because it has not behaved in a credible fashion. The gospel doesn't "sell" anymore because we are not selling the gospel. The gospel is about transformation, not message. If the "gospel" heard does not produce results then what was heard was not the gospel.
If the church wants to continue to exist it needs to take its own message seriously. If we are going to transform the world, we must first be transformed.
Related Tags: credibility, reality, transformation, gospel, church
Confidence in the church dropped in the wake of the television evangelism scandals of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It then fell significantly in the wake of revelations surrounding the Catholic priest abuse scandal in 2002.What a bunch of gobbledy-gook! "Hear the Good News in a language they understand" - INDEED! How about see the gospel lived out in the lives of the people that are the face of the church. You want to rebuild the credibility of the church? How about directly and stiffly addressing the abuses discussed in the first paragraph of that pull quote!
“I would say that [the drop is] because organized religion is organized and it’s religious,” commented Mark Batterson, lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington. “And what Jesus was about was inviting people to follow him on a spiritual journey and that’s a little different deal.
“I don’t think people are looking for religion,” added Batterson, who is hosting a conference this week to help churches create an impacting “buzz” in their communities. “I think they’re looking for God. And unfortunately, they can’t always find God in religion and so I think the Church has to find ways to incarnate the truth so that people can hear the Good News in a language they understand.”
Batterson's comments are misdirection and designed to perpetuate the kind of "front" that allows the crap that caused the precipitous fall to show up to begin with. The problem isn't the message, the problem is making the REALITY OF THE MESSAGE apparent.
Simply put, the church lacks credibility because it has not behaved in a credible fashion. The gospel doesn't "sell" anymore because we are not selling the gospel. The gospel is about transformation, not message. If the "gospel" heard does not produce results then what was heard was not the gospel.
If the church wants to continue to exist it needs to take its own message seriously. If we are going to transform the world, we must first be transformed.
Related Tags: credibility, reality, transformation, gospel, church
