Some Thoughts on the State of Evangelicalism

“truth is fallen in the street….Yea, truth faileth” (Isa 59:15 KJV).

This article has been painted with a broad brush, so to speak, and generalises the situation more than some would like. Nevertheless, it speaks truth to too many churches today. Furthermore, I only mention that which I’ve seen and experienced so, although I’ve applied it to the churches generally, many evangelical churches are faithfully proclaiming the Gospel, living godly lives, and worshipping and singing God’s praises according to his Word.

Soft surgeons make stinking wounds

In Evangelicalism, our worship services have been reduced to “feel-good” gatherings with soft-preaching and positive-thinking addresses to their largely untaught people, which is a consequence of the dumbing-down of doctrine in our churches. The sermons in the more with-it-biblically evangelical churches, as they like to think of themselves, desperately avoid anything which could be construed as emotion; consequently, they’re now just dry tedious religious lectures, cerebral rather than spiritual, dispassionately spoken by a preacher who seems not to have been moved by the subject or the passage from which he’s preaching.

Sermons are not lectures, they should be aimed at the heart through the mind, and not just stop there. They should be designed to produce godly change in heart and life, in agreement with Scripture. They should be preached with conviction that message is right and that the hearers need to hear what God requires of each of us.

One only has to look at the apostle Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, where he preached a hard-hitting sermon which pricked the consciences of the assembled Jews, piercing their hearts with the sin of crucifying Jesus; and that despite their murderous attempt at silencing him, he had been made Lord and Messiah. “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’”.

Once he had achieved his purpose of convicting the Jews there of their sin, he gave them the antidote to heal their chastised hearts: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins….Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day” (Acts 2:36-38, 41 NIV).

Similar preaching and results are also found in Acts 3:11-4:5. The consequences to the apostles were that they were threatened with violence and arrest by the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:21-22). Indeed, the apostles were constantly physically abused wherever they went because of the message and Saviour they proclaimed.

It was preaching such as this which turned the Roman world upside down. But the only thing being turned upside down by so many preachers today is their cup of coffee under the pulpit as they upend the contents into their mouth. Sadly, I’ve seen such things.

And it was preaching such as this, under Whitefield, Wesley, Spurgeon, Moody, and so on, which turned Europe and America upside down, producing great revivals which swept many thousands into the kingdom.

And, just as Peter’s hearers were cut to the heart through the power of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit, and asked what should they do, the revivalist preachers likewise preached with Holy Spirit power, causing their hearers to fall to the ground paralysed with fear and conviction of sin, shriek with terror at the prospect of hell, some holding onto their seat so they wouldn’t fall into the fiery lake.

And, while such gospel preaching is essential, there also needs to be teaching content in the sermon as well, so that the hearers can grow in the knowledge of Jesus and the Gospel, of living godly lives, and be informed and warned about false teachers whose purpose is to take the Gospel away from them and away from Jesus.

Sentimental songs

Furthermore, traditional, doctrinally sound, gospel-focused hymns have been universally abandoned and replaced with Christian pop songs, so simplistic and doctrine-free that they could have been written by teenagers; and the church members, young and old, bop and gyrate as they sing them; and the tunes are often flat, mournful, and uninspiring. I can’t imagine such songs being sung when Peter preached his sermons, with the hearers dancing up and down in such a manner as just described here. How could sinners who have been “cut to the heart” by a gospel sermon feel like bopping?

There’s nothing wrong with new hymns and Christian songs but their goal should be to lift the heart and soul of the worshipper heavenward. They need to focus on God and the Gospel because he is the object of our worship. And they need to be doctrinally sound, focusing on what Jesus achieved for us in his Passion – it’s the Truth which moves people’s hearts, not the shallow lyrics of a pop song.

The story of salvation lifts the heart of the believer and, with the right lyrics, draws out his/her heartfelt praise and worship. We worship God for who he is and what he’s done for us by opening the doors to heaven and bringing us into his glorious presence for evermore.

Multitudes of Christian hymns have endured for centuries because they sing of Jesus and his saving power and love – they focus the heart on Jesus rather than on the individual’s own feelings. But the modern Christian pop songs, ditties set to poor music, are ephemeral, lasting only as long as sales endure, after which they’re forgotten as the newer pop songs are written and published.

And in far too many churches today, the songs are self-centred and sentimental and, in too many churches, call on the Holy Spirit to “fall” on them so that they can be transported to an altered state of consciousness, just like that of Theosophist New Agers – this is the goal of their worship.

And when so-called “worship” in our modern churches is led by young people, and the songs written by them, they want to make them sound contemporary, with the same sound as secular modern pop songs. And the congregation raise their hands with the music, sway in time to the tune, move their hips, raise their eyes with ga-ga faces to an invisible heaven, with the more mature people making themselves look stupid in the process – it’s embarrassing and shameful. The adults are leaders, whether officially or not, and are meant to be role models of Christian faith and living, not immaturity and fake joy and ecstasy.

Modernising the churches

I’m painfully aware that my comments and observations do not apply to every evangelical church; that I’ll be seen as a wowser, a killjoy, an old fuddy-duddy who is stuck in the past – and I accept that criticism. But just because good practices, preaching, worship, and older hymn-singing are “old” in the eyes of our contemporary church culture, they are still good practices, preaching, worship, and hymn-singing. And just because modern preaching, worship, and singing are contemporary and “up-to-date”, it doesn’t make them better than the earlier good practices, preaching, worship, and hymn-singing.

The church worship service should be quite different to a rock concert, but in some churches, the only difference is the words of the songs. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to hear the words over the pounding of drums and electric guitars. And brash young people in the worship group regard the worship service as a stage, a concert, in which to “strut their stuff”, forgetting that they’re there to lead the congregation to and in worship of God and to glorify him. They see it as a chance to demonstrate their talents in a friendly, and/or tolerant setting, rather than to a secular crowd who will boo and jeer bad playing and lack of talent.

I had the misfortune once of attending a Men’s Conference at Hillsong Church. The morning began with a rock n’ roll show. The stage was shrouded in black, and from beneath the black curtain came wreaths of smoke. After a wait to build anticipation among the attendees, a group of young men with their musical instruments came out. The lead wore jeans with holes, and they tried in every way to look like “bad boys”, and to be a serious rock band. It was clear that this show was aiming to stir the flesh rather than the spirit; to impress the audience with their style and talent, rather than leading them to humility before God. The only difference from this Christianised rock concert was the words, which I assumed were Christian of some sort – but I didn’t know for sure because the guitars and drums were so loud that I couldn’t hear them. It was such a vanity project that I thought it was comical, even while my soul grieved that churches had descended to this level.

“These people show honour to me with words, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is worthless” (Matt 15:8-9 NCV).

Granted, many of the hymns which were sung just a generation ago are riddled with “thou” and “thee”, and lines such as, “Take up they cross, my Saviour said, if thou wouldst my disciple be”, and are not how we speak today; there was a genuine need to bring the Church into the current generation. These archaisms were hangovers from the KJV in a time when all hymns had this tangled syntax; likewise, prayers were also riddled with the same “church-speak” and “bible English”, and I always wished those who prayed like this would put a sock in it. Even as new bible translations were published, they still retained “thou” and “thee”, especially when addressing God in prayer, e.g. RSV, Phillips, Moffatt etc.

Eventually the churches started to enter the 20^th century by updating all of these older styles and speech, and modernising them all – even the language of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer of 1662 was updated in the 1970s in the Sydney diocese because many people were exiting the Anglican communion and going to independent and Pentecostal churches, where the singing was joyful and personal, the worship freer and more open to self-expression.

When modernising became exploitation

Our current “worship songs” were originally composed for Christian youth so they could have contemporary pop music of their own, the intent being that they would contain no ungodly language and concepts such as in secular pop and Rock, but still have the sound. This was a healthy and inspiring motivation. The market for songs like this burgeoned and young Christians could listen to their “idols” and even have their pictures on the walls of their bedrooms, just like their secular peers.

Young Christian songwriters became famous in the smaller pop world of Christianity, becoming big fish in a small pond, and did concerts and tours, mainly in churches. Christian songs soon became a money-making machine which was quickly capitalised on by Christian music publishers. The songs were copyrighted and oftentimes the singers were exploited by these publishers, controlled and used. Some Christian singers were corrupted by the industry and fame, and some who had been exploited and abused left the faith altogether. In trying to imitate the secular world, they became part of it and were engulfed by it.

And, as many “worship teams” from churches cashed in on the market by writing and singing their own music, and Christian publishers copyrighted the songs over which they had control, many people got rich, and some famous. Churches had to buy the latest songs and put them on projectors to display on screens so the congregation could sing along; but purchasing the music didn’t excuse them from paying royalties every time they sang one of the songs they had purchased.

And in the worship meetings of the mega-churches, only their own music was sung. So, not only could the Christians in these mega-churches no longer sing old-style hymns, they weren’t allowed to even sing the songs of other mega-churches. Hillsong and Christian City Church rivalry is a good example of this.

Contrast this with just a generation ago when churches could make a one-time-purchase of a batch of hymn books for congregational use, and sing the hymns as many times as they liked without having to pay a cent after the purchase.

Many pastors of these mega-churches had big dreams for success and actually gained international fame. They started selling their sermons on tape and disc and became fabulously rich; Hillsong and Christian City Church even had their own shops on the church premises to sell the pastor’s sermons.

And the churches became meccas for Christians who wanted “something more” than they were getting in their own churches, and started migrating to these mega-churches, where worship was a full-on rock concert, and nothing was said in the sermons which might offend the congregation’s sensibilities. Positive-attitude addresses replaced gospel sermons and the people loved it.

Consequently, what began as a small music ministry to Christian youth quickly became an industry; and many of their pastors became arrogant and their morals suppressed, and they soon fell into adultery, divorce and remarriage, embezzlement of church finances, fraud, and lies to hide it all. But the truth couldn’t be hidden and one-by-one they were exposed.

Non-Pentecostal evangelical Christian leaders, rather than observing the trend of corruption and encouraging their congregations to beware, jumped on board this gravy train and let it run rampant. Lives have been destroyed, churches corrupted, ministers have fallen, many have lost their faith, and the Gospel has been exchanged for sentiment and suspect experience. This is what happens when the Church compromises with the world.

“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble’” (Jas 4:4-6).

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (1 Jn 2:15-17).