We Could Get a Few Things DONE

Today I’m thinking about signs that show that a church is successful.

It’s an interesting subject. Sometimes God does things that are impressive from an earthly perspective, and it demonstrates that he’s on the scene, so if your church is big and rich, it could mean God is with you. On the other hand, what if a pastor sees a big, healthy church and decides to make his church big, too, even if he has to cut spiritual corners to get there? It’s like an anorexia victim puffing up her cheeks with air to look fat.

I’m concerned about the trend toward building megachurches. I don’t see the point. How does that please God? What does he care how big your church is? When we say “the church,” we’re not referring to one building. We’re referring to over a billion people, wherever they may be. It doesn’t matter if A church is big, as long as THE church is big.

I can understand wanting to reach as many people as possible, if you have a good message, but what if you’re corrupting the message to reach more people? That’s stupid. You’re defeating your fundamental purpose. You’re like a woman who uses sex as a lure to get a loving, supportive, faithful husband. You’re using catfish bait, but you expect to catch a marlin. That’s nutty.

Here’s the bottom line: the size of a church proves nothing. If you run a big church, you need to realize you may be a much worse pastor than the guy down the street, so think twice before you tell someone else how to make it. You may be leading him straight to hell. TV cameras don’t make you a great man of God. You may be a total zero, headed for a major fall.

How many megachurch TV pastors have we seen, who turned out to be utter failures as Christians? That proves my case. Unfortunately, we can’t see the great pastors who have unknown churches. But they’re out there.

When the Christian church really got started, there were 120 people involved. This was after Jesus had worked for at least three years. That was the net, for the greatest pastor of all time.

It wasn’t a megasynagogue or a megashul. You could put the whole core of the church in two buses. But the Bible says they were all “in one accord.” That doesn’t mean they were muzzled, or that they mindlessly agreed with every mistake their leaders made; it means they were serious. The Holy Spirit rewarded them by blowing into the room and filling them with supernatural tongues. They went out and conquered the world for Christ. Meanwhile, the big religious organization of the day, which was Judaism, went on to stagnate for two thousand years.

Jesus only had 120 people to work with. Would anyone say God didn’t approve of his ministry? Would anyone say that it would have been bigger, if he had been doing things right? Actually, some of the guys on TBN might.

Last year, I was in DC for the National Day of Prayer. Mike and I visited a great Assemblies of God Church. There was no light show when the band played. The music wasn’t deafening. There was no rap. There were no TV cameras. The service was organized, but they were flexible enough to let the Holy Spirit interrupt. While the pastor’s wife was talking, she changed course and started talking about a different topic the Holy Spirit had put on her mind, and it was extraordinary, because what she said was tailored to Mike’s specific need.

The church wasn’t huge. I would guess it held a thousand people when packed. But it was clean and nicely decorated, and the people looked good. It seemed like a very healthy church. The Holy Spirit definitely moved while we were there.

I wish I knew of a church like that near me. I’ll be honest. I love the people at my church, but we are working so hard to attract people, and at putting on a slick show, the place seems to be getting somewhat sterile. We have lasers and smoke machines, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a spontaneous Holy Spirit move on the stage. I don’t think there’s room for it in the schedule. And sometimes we use music by people like Eminem, who wrote about raping his mother. That can’t be good for the kids. I can’t see Jesus coming back and snapping his fingers to an Eminem number while they introduce him.

I don’t recognize crappy rap music when I hear it, but many people in the church do, and they have come to me and commented negatively on it. It has offended people. I was oblivious, because fortunately, I have great taste in music. If they played Lionel Hampton, I’d notice.

Churches imitate the secular world in order to attact members. But that which you imitate, you become. These days, mainstream churches deny the virgin birth, the second coming, the existence of sin and hell, and even the deity of Jesus. They got that way by trying to attract members! Spirit-filled churches are headed the same way. Whether they admit it or not, it proves they don’t trust God to attract crowds. We think we’re better than the mainstream churches, but we are no different. We just found a different way to fail.

What would happen if the church closest to you started experiencing miracles? What would happen if a prophet arose there, and that prophet started saying things only God could know? What would happen if the people who attended the church started changing dramatically, due to the power of the Holy Spirit? What if people started feeling God’s addictive presence powerfully? Wouldn’t crowds show up? Am I crazy? Isn’t this what the world is thirsting for?

You can’t get those things by using the world’s tricks. God isn’t going to show up because you print snazzy flyers and do phone marketing, or because you talk about love all the time and never mention sin, or because you promise people God will give them money. Linus said the Great Pumpkin looked for the sincerest pumpkin patch when choosing the place for his manifestations. Surely God is as smart as the Great Pumpkin.

The prosperity gospel is a problem, because it’s exaggerated way beyond anything God ever promised, and it does not work. Churches promise people more money than they know what to do with, and they give to the church, and the money doesn’t show up. So instead of real miracles, which would raise attendance, some churches deliver promises of financial miracles that never occur. Then what happens when you try to get people to go to church? “My aunt gave away half of her retirement money, and we had to pay for her funeral. Why would I associate with those thieves?” “But God will change your life and fix your problems and heal your family!” “Right, like he fixed my aunt’s problems?”

My church has little prayer cells called GAP groups (“God Answers Prayer”). I belong to one. Every so often, I have to lead it. On those occasions, I refuse to prepare. I used to try to put things together, but then I remembered what Jesus told us about appearing in public. He said that if we were called before the authorities, the Holy Spirit would tell us what to say. He commanded us not to prepare. Was he a liar? Was he stupid? I don’t think so. Therefore I choose to take him seriously; that’s what walking by faith is all about. If he will help us talk to the cops, he will also help us talk to each other. So far, it has been working like you would not believe. I show up with nothing, and we end up with so much to talk about, we can’t finish it.

We also pray in the Spirit, as a group, using a timer to make sure we don’t skimp. And we put on gentle Christian music, because God inhabits the praises of his people, and because the Bible says the Holy Spirit is grieved by clamor. This stuff is working. It changes the atmosphere in the room, and it makes things happen.

We don’t see this kind of thing much in the main area of the church, except during prayer meetings. Maybe the services aren’t always as powerful as they should be. The GAP group makes up for it, to a great extent.

On the one hand, you don’t want to be so supernaturally kooky and obsessed with correction that you drive people away. On the other, you have to acknowledge that what people really want is God, not you or your big giant church. Paul said he hooked people with God’s power, not man’s fancy words.

Maybe we need smaller churches where people are in one accord. A good seed is better than a rotten plant that bears no fruit. The problem with seeker-friendliness is that you end up attracting people who aren’t seekers, and in order to keep them, you have to put their whiny demands above God’s plan. Suddenly you don’t say much about sin or hell. You talk all the time about love, as if God were Oprah. You decide “Thou shalt not judge” is a commandment, even when people are dying for lack of correction. Sin brings curses on people; a pastor has to tell his flock about it. Otherwise, he can’t say he loves them.

It seems to me that if you have to resort to secular methods in order to succeed, your ministry didn’t come from God. It proves he doesn’t want you to make it, so you should quit and try to find out what he really wants you to do. Maybe you were supposed to be a dentist. Who knows? To find out God’s plan, you should start relying on his power. Hey, maybe he can do a better job than you.

Walking by faith works like this: God tells you to do certain things, and you trust him, and you do those things, counting on God to make them work. You don’t cheat. Moses didn’t go down to the shore of the Red Sea and try to push the water back with his foot while no one was looking, and when Elijah burned people alive with God’s fire, he didn’t bring lighter fluid, just in case. In fact, God punishes people who try to “help” him in ways that deny faith. He destroyed Saul’s kingdom because Saul tried to fill in for some priests who were late. He judged Moses for whacking a rock twice to make water pour out of it, instead of hitting it once, as ordered by God.

Either this stuff works, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, God is a liar or a fantasy, and we should all quit and go to a nice strip club and get drunk. If it does, let’s quit adding our worthless, hypocritical nonsense to God’s perfect way.

I’m getting wonderful results. If God ever starts letting me down, I’ll see you at the strip club. Don’t bet the rent on that.

More

Aaron popped up and corrected me. The big mistake Moses made at Meribah was not hitting the rock twice, but hitting it, period. That was what I originally intended to write, but I didn’t trust my memory, and when I Googled it, I got it wrong somehow. Moses was supposed to speak to the rock, not hit it.

The interesting thing is that this makes the citation even more appropriate. Look what Moses was called on to do. He had to walk by faith. Sure, he had to use his natural strength to walk up to a rock and talk to it, but he did not have to use natural means directly related to the goal. In other words, the things he was asked to do were easy things in the natural; he was not called on to work, in any meaningful sense. God didn’t say, “Start digging a well, and I’ll make sure it pays off.” The most important thing was to do precisely what he was told, even though it was not something that ordinarily solves irrigation problems. The intended result was a purely supernatural event: a rock opening up and giving water. It wasn’t an ordinary spring which God simply chose to make productive.

Now, what would have happened, had God given the same order to one of our modern, carnal prosperity preachers? First, he would have begged a local businessman to lend him a bulldozer. Then he would have made his drama team find him a big hardhat. He would have had his band prepare some dramatic music. He would have sent out twenty thousand flyers, inviting people to see him BRING FORTH WATER FROM THE BARREN ROCK! And he would have called the local TV stations. He would have jumped on the bulldozer, made a speech about how your financial problems were “like this ROCK,” and shoved the rock out of the way while the band played behind him.

If water had come out, people would have said, “That idiot broke a spring open, and he’s trying to tell us God did it so we’ll give him money. He probably wiped out a water main.”

This is why you don’t do things for God. At least, you don’t force his promises to come true. God can’t get his glory if you bust your rear end and stay up nights working to make things happen. Any idiot can get things through hard work. Only a man of God can get things by walking by faith.

Think about Jesus. Is there even one example of him giving people medicine? No, but he healed a whole lot of people. Think about Elisha, who purified a well by throwing salt in it. Think about Naaman, who got healed of leprosy by going swimming. How about Joshua, who destroyed the walls of Jericho by walking around them in a circle?

Either it’s about God’s power, or it’s not. If your walk with God is about hard work and your wonderful talents and gifts and social connections, you might as well be a Buddhist.