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Gospel-Hardened Congregations

By Hedgehog.

Invitations keep arriving to attend re-unions - strange events, where you meet with people you last saw maybe 40 or 50 years ago. One was to the college where I trained for ministry, in the company of bright-eyed fervent well-thatched enthusiasts, pawing the ground as we prepared to change the world. We were going to march into the doldrums of our churches and yank them back to life. The main theme of ministry was challenge. “Come on,” we would urge, “get more involved, do more, give more. try harder. Then the church will revive and the Kingdom will come.” We did all this, and guess what: nothing changed. The re-union invitation contained a recent picture of some of these old-time zealots. Two were in wheelchairs, all were bald and showing signs of crumbling. “I cannot go to this; look how they've changed”, I said to my wife. She smiled. “Look in the mirror, dear,” she urged. Notwithstanding the way we have all changed in physical presence, the most telling change has been in our gospel emphasis. My father was in ministry for 35 years and said at the end that he wished he had spoken more about the comfort than the challenge of faith. Only now do I begin to understand what he meant. Have we been challenged into paralysis and decline? In a previous career as a news reporter I recall sitting in court and hearing a felon described as being impervious to all warnings and advice. On one ear lobe was tattooed 'in' and on the other 'out'. It happens. After a while the most oft-repeated warning, pleading, urging loses force. Congregations become gospel-hardened. In 20 years at my last church, I preached 1,400 sermons, many of which had to do with strategies for growth and the need to build up the Kingdom. Membership at the start of the ministry was 110. At the end it was 106! Isaiah gives us 39 chapters of scorching condemnation of a people in rebellion against God. Did he finally realise by chapter 40 that he was getting nowhere and what they really needed was consolation? Is that why he (or his disciple) changes gear and starts saying 'Comfort, comfort my people, says your God'? Hedgehog is a pseudonym for mostly lovable, but occasionally prickly, Christian leaders. If you have something you’d like to sound off about, and would like to be Hedgehog in a future edition of Ministry Today, please send your article to the address on the cover of this journal.