“For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires. So they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”
2 Timothy 4:3
If you've never heard the story of the Pied Piper, it's quite terrifying. The story tells of a man hired to rid a town of all its rats. After he'd accomplished the job, the townsfolk refused to pay him. He responded by luring all the town's children away to their deaths.
“You must go above and beyond to make sure your ministry funnels students into the church, not away from it.” -Jon Saunders
Mr. Sanders' quote above (full article HERE) is a powerful word of correction for all parachurch organizations and ministries and for those who start, run, and support them. Any organization, regardless of what level of “good” they think they’re doing, that ends up pulling or keeping people away from deep involvement and investment in the local church is doing individuals, the church, and Christ Jesus a great disservice. But what's interesting is the visual given at the top of Mr. Sanders' article—that of empty seats.
The visual of empty seats seems to imply that the congregation has been led astray by parachurch organizations. Its members are seemingly too exhausted from or too preoccupied with “doing good” to show up and fill the seats on Sunday morning. But maybe that visual of empty seats represents part of the problem.
Maybe the church has far too long perpetrated the idea that the church is NOT the members of Christ's Body & Bride, but instead nothing more than a seat for consumers to occupy for an hour on the weekend. In many cases, local churches grossly misrepresent the biblical revelation of Christ's Church—something infinitely more than a place to show up, sit down with coffee and donut in hand, to either be entertained -or- guilted into enduring boring announcements, bad music, and stale sermons that are long forgotten before we get to IHOP or leave the church parking lot. Before getting too defensive, when was the last time you had a rich discussion about the sermon after a church service? Hopefully, it's been less than seven days.
Years ago, while on staff with a local church, I noticed a huge segment of the church members contributed vast amounts of time, energy, effort, and financial support to a Christian weekend retreat experience. It was very odd to me because many—while serving in an official capacity for this group, had no role whatsoever within the local church. They would unashamedly dismiss encouragement to serve within the church because they had commitments and obligations with this organization.
King Jesus’ Great Commission isn’t about doing the most good or even winning souls for Christ. It is about building up His Body & Bride, i.e. the Church. Any ministry or organization that funnels kids, students, or anyone away from active membership in the local church is a Pied Piper leading them somewhere Christ never intended. That's what Larry Osborne refers to as mission creep in his book by the same title.
The Lord’s harsh rebuke, “You traverse land and sea to win a single convert, and when they become one, you make them twice the children of hell as you are,” fell upon the Pharisees for their well-intended but misguided approach to ministry and missions.
The Apostle Paul revealed that every gifting and ministry should have the same goal, “Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.” Those who support organizations and groups at the expense of Christ’s Bride (whether intentional or not) are in for a rude awakening, because as Scripture reveals, “...false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.”
Whatever “good” we think we’re doing must be judged and measured by God’s divine standard of revelation, not the contemporary consensus of the day. Trained medical doctors in the 50s thought they were doing good when they prescribed thalidomide. It led to thousands of birth defects. Professional nutrition counselors and dietitians in the 90s thought they were doing good when they promoted the carbohydrate-based food pyramid. It led to the diabetes epidemic. The medical community thought it was doing good in telling us to wear masks, quarantine, and get vaccinated when COVID-19 hit. We all know how that turned out. Doing good, even the most good, can't be the goal. Obedience to and steadfastness in the Word of God to build up the Body & Bride of Christ must be.
If our work isn’t overtly and intentionally “equipping the saints for works of ministry and building up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ,” then we need to get back to casting our crowns at His feet and refuse to do anything that doesn’t funnel people DIRECTLY into functional membership within His Body. That's called discipleship. That's what King Jesus' Great Commission commands us to do.
When we're arrogant enough to think that surely our version of good has to be the one that's spot on, that's proof-positive we're in the prideful fast lane on the highway to hell. That's what Paul wrote about in 1 Timothy 4:1-2, saying, “Now the Spirit expressly states that in later times some will abandon the faith to follow deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons, influenced by the hypocrisy of liars, whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.”
Maybe a visual of empty seats isn't a bad thing after all. Instead of empty seats because everyone's busy with and exhausted from serving and participating in things that funnel people away from the church, how beautiful would it be if all those empty seats represented the whole Body being fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promoting the growth of the Body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part?
What if all those seats were empty because His Bride was suited up in the Armon of God out making much of His Name in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth? Wouldn't that be something?
Blessings and love,
Kevin M. Kelley
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