The average preaching in churches today leaves much to be desired- oftentimes, the congregation is fed with crumbs instead of bread. Leaders themselves must first be grounded in the bible and doctrine if they are to be able to teach the whole counsel of God to their flocks, but many leaders simply lack motivation and time to do so.

Recommended Read: ‘Jesus Has Left the Building’: Scotland’s Secular Slide—and Signs of Hope

The article offers some sober lessons for the church. Churches begin to decline when they they make compromises in the final and sufficient authority of the Bible in order to remain ‘relevant’ to wider culture and society. Some of us can remember how many Malaysian churches in the 1960s went into decline because they neglected the Great Commission due to the influence of liberal theology. Compromise in biblical inerrancy and biblical authority is an existential threat to the church.

Lessons

1) Compromise in biblical inerrancy and final authority is the slippery slide which results in the death of a thousand cuts for the church.

“The danger of quiet infiltration,” Ferguson said, “is that you are quietly infiltrated.” That’s how a trickle of biblical errancy, fed by a culture that loves scientific rationalization, can grow into a stream. And that’s how a stream of biblical compromise, fed by a culture that says everyone gets their own truth, can grow into a river. Little by little, that movement can carry away a church’s foundation—even one laid thick and solid on 400 years of Reformed theology.

I am afraid many evangelical churches inadvertently have allowed social engagement & ministry (good things in themselves) to overshadow, if not displace evangelism & witnessing the gospel. How ironic that I talk like this when I have just finished writing the book, “Christianity and the Social Order”. I must pay penance by writing a book that proclaims and defends the good news of salvation.

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