Advertising Ashes

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Man on fire

You never have to advertise a fire. —Leonard Ravenhill

Are you growing increasingly distressed by the worldly attempts by many churches today to market their church? Does the latest church fad sweeping the nation leave you cold? Are you growing nostalgic for "the olden days" when a preacher would walk into the pulpit and by the unction of God set the place ablaze?

Now that everyone in the United States has a blog—it seems like it, doesn't it?—I read an increasing number of sites that are advertising that they have the solution to whatever the Church's problem is. We all know what the problems are. Just a glance at the Top 25 bestselling Christian books in your local Christian bookstore will tell you:

  • Your church needs better marketing.
  • Your church needs to understand community demographics better.
  • Your church needs to have purpose/mission.
  • Your church needs to be relevant.
  • Your church needs to be authentic.
  • Your church needs to reach out to whatever group of people it's failed to reach in the past.
  • Your church needs to be concerned with end-times prophecy.
  • Your church needs to have a better men's/women's/youth/children's ministry.
  • Your church needs __________.

In a charismatic age, when even the crustiest Presbyterians are raising their hands in worship, how is it that we have forgotten the only thing the Church needs? Why have we forgotten the Holy Spirit?

You never have to advertise a fire. That's the answer to all these books clamoring for attention, trying to get you to buy to find out the "Super Secret Christian Formula" that will suddenly take you, your family, and your church to the absolute pinnacle of Christian experience.

Yet nothing draws people like a fire. You see a fire, you immediately start wanting to linger, to see what is burning, to watch what happens next. Fire evoke memories of stories told while camping, the community around bathed in the amber glow of timelessness and wonder. Fire heals, cleanses, and illumines. It spreads and envelops.

If there is any one characteristic of the Church in America in 2005 it is that for all our bluster, our bestselling fixes, and our introspection over the failure of believers to rise above the secular mire, no other answer can come but that we need the fire of God poured out on us.

John Eldredge, bestselling author of Wild at Heart, claims that men find church boring. David Morrow recently wrote Why Men Hate Going to Church. I have the simple answer for that: they are not encountering the Holy Spirit in the churches they attend. Someone who regularly attends a church that is filled with people overflowing with the Holy Spirit and who experiences the Holy Spirit in power in those meetings will NEVER be bored and will NEVER hate gathering.

But this is not most churches.

Ever heard of the aviator cults? These were primitive people who lived in remote areas untouched by modernity. As aviation grew, these tribal people started seeing huge, unusual birds in the sky. They were a sign. And some of those tribesmen were startled when a metal bird descended from the clouds and tall, white people emerged from their bellies. These people were like the gods themselves. So when the gods got back into their metal birds and flew away, the tribesmen were compelled to erect effigies of them and the odd bird they came in. Totemic planes built of reeds were set up in hopes that the gods would some day return and bless the people. This persisted for generations.

Today, our churches resemble aviator cults. We have a vague memory of generations ago when God showed up in our churches in power. But as time goes on, the story breaks down, the reason for it becomes muddied, and we start dancing around trying to make the aviator gods return. Churches do this in a variety of ways. Most churches entertain, rely on clever marketing campaigns to put posteriors in the pews, or scour the demographic data to tailor their message to what the neighborhood wants to hear. They advertise the ashes of the fire that might have once burned brightly, but is no more. They'll sculpt the ashes into amusing shapes and toy around with the properties of the ashes until they've mined all the ashes are worth—but on reflection, the ashes remain ashes and the fire is eventually forgotten.

You never have to advertise a fire. The Holy Spirit's fire in a church will obliterate whatever feeble gains a marketing campaign can create. The Holy Spirit's fire in a church catches in the community and changes lives profoundly. The Holy Spirit's fire cleanses, renews, and empowers.

For all too many churches today, there is no fire, only ashes. This is the dirty little secret that no one can utter. And when the Sunday service is over, it's the nagging doubt in every person's mind as they walk out wondering why they feel so empty even though they just spent all that time in church.

Everything besides the Spirit will fail to change this condition. The Christian pundits out there are misdirecting people into thinking there are other ways to get there, but there aren't. Only the Spirit of God satisfies. And once you have the Spirit, all that other dross is burned away.

It's time to stop pretending. For too many the Holy Spirit has become a dim memory in a dim church filled with dim people. God, send us your Fire!

The Superficial vs. The Supernatural

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A church without the supernatural is superficial. —Leonard Ravenhill

It cannot be about numbers. If our churches are only concerned with how many people are packed into the seats rather than being concerned about the power of the Spirit of the Lord made manifest in our meetings, then we have lost the war and we should all go home and wait to die.

If the people who run our churches do not understand that the measure of spiritual depth in those who show up on Sunday can only be the presence of the Holy Spirit indwelling in fullness, then we will never see revival, only irrelevance.

We can jabber on about church models, worldviews, programs and such, but none of those ever raised the dead and never will, no matter how hard we work to refine them.

But when you talk with most people who claim to be Christians about this, more often than not you can count on a glassy-eyed stare. This is usually accompanied by the inevitable question, "But how do you measure that?"

No one who has encountered the shekinah glory of God ever asks that question. That the question is so prevalent is a shameful mark of our abominable lack of seriousness about what we believe.

I am not satisfied with my own spiritual state. And while I only have myself to blame, I am disheartened that the leaders of our churches today have aspired to so little, looking for plastic trinkets when the storehouse of heaven is ready to be poured on us. Why are we aiming so abysmally low?

Personally, I've had it with all the debates over process, programs, and progress. It's a lie from the enemy of our souls to keep us away from the One who can accomplish it all through us if we only submit to His workings and not our own.

Does anyone out there get this? If you do, how do we band together and seek to revive the dead thing the Church in America has become?

My promise to you is that it will start with me. I cannot endure this powerless thing we have made from the vital, living, fire-breathing Church Jesus set in motion more than two thousand years ago. If what we have now is the best it can ever be then Jesus take me right this second.

I know this blog doesn't get much readership. I don't care. I can only pray that it gets the right readership, people who feel the same way and are angered by what is happening to the Church in this country. You have to have your head in the sand not to see how we are failing, but where are the prophets who are calling us back to repentance and prayer and weeping between the horns of the altar? We've had our eyes gouged out by the worldly, just like Samson, but he prayed, "Lord, just one more time strengthen me." Before the Lord comes again, let that be our prayer.

Oh, Most Holy God, send the Fire! Your people are content with smoke when we need your Fire! Spirit of God, descend upon the altar of our hearts and make us again a supernatural people, a people to whom the lost can look and say, "Truly, God is among them." May your glory burn brightly in the breast of each of us who name you, that we take up our holy calling that is our destiny, tearing down the pillars of hell by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. Make us content with nothing less than the fullness of your indwelling, Lord Jesus, that the works you have set aside for us to work from the foundation of the world be made manifest in these last days, that none should perish, but all come to knowledge of you. Kindle again in us your Fire before your great and final day. For your glory and honor, always in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.

That Hideous Strength

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I have news for every author of every book I have read recently on the subject of how to fix the American Church’s problems:

You are wrong. Every last one of you.

To your credit, though, your ability to note everything that is awry in churches across this country is astute and well-cataloged. It’s just that your solutions are no solutions at all.

Over the last year, I’ve been following much of what is being called “The Emerging Church” or “Emergent.” This is a new movement that is calling churches out from their country club mentalities into a vital first century NT church life. It caters to the postmodern crowd, is heavily invested in relationships, story, mystery, and being “organic.” It has a whole host of its own buzzwords, authorities, and conventions. And—to its credit—it loathes consumeristic, megachurch seeker-sensitivity.

But any random reading of authors like Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, Len Sweet, Randy Frazee, and a growing legion of others finds the very core of the movement very much rooted in a sort of sentimental humanism. Buried beneath the buzzwords and angry polemics against the crusty institutional church is the real source of this trend’s power: what I like to call (with apologies to C.S. Lewis) “That Hideous Strength.”

That Hideous Strength has been behind much of what churches in America call progress in the last forty or fifty years. In recent years, the Church Growth Movement largely abandoned itself to that strength, and Emergent is taking it one step further—at least if a decent reading of the acolytes of Emergent is any indication.

What is That Hideous Strength? Well, for my purpose here it is not quite what Lewis defined in his novel as the power of the Eldils (fallen angels), but it is another monstrosity virtually on par with it: the power of Man.

Here is where we are going wrong. Here is why the Church in America is failing to live up to Her glorious potential. We have put all our faith in what we can do through our own strength. In almost every Ermegent book I have read, I have come away noting that to make the solutions they espouse a reality, we really don’t need the Holy Spirit at all. If we just love people and love God, reach out with a tender touch in a missional way to our communities and to the downtrodden, then all will be well.

Except we left the Lord out of the equation altogther. My heart breaks thinking about this.

Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit to His disciples in the upper room and then told them to await the Spirit coming in power at a later time. When the Spirit fell on the disciples, they went out and ministered in a power that was not their own.

Check out every occurance of the Spirit falling on believers in Acts. The result was that they went from being average people to being someone touched by the Divine. Everything they did after that point was extraordinary. No longer were they people who were satisfied with being loving neighbors or nice people, but they were energized and bold saints of God!

How is it that in a charismatic generation, we have entirely forgotten the Holy Spirit? Why do we think a model, no matter how wonderful it sounds, will make a difference in our churches if our people are not filled with the Holy Spirit?

Some will argue that the average person in the pew is filled with the Holy Spirit. My question then is, when was the last time that person’s shadow fell on the sick and they were healed? When was the last time he was caught up to the third heaven? When did she last prophesy? When did his testimony drive the lost to cry out, “Brothers, what shall we do?” or cause others to pick up rocks to stone him?

The major distinction between all of us in the Church and those of all other religions is the fact that the Spirit of the Living God dwells in us! All those advocates of Emergent are preaching a Gospel that is no different than what the average Buddhist or Shintoist preaches if there is no Holy Spirit involved. You can be missional all you want, you can have a love for other people around you who don’t know Jesus, but if nothing you do is flooded with power from on high, then it is doomed to failure in the long run.

Are we ever going to learn this lesson? The reason no one cares about our message anymore is largely because we Christians in America are no longer supernatural people. Our faith has become one largely of mental assent and Hallmark card sentimentality, devoid of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. We have shoved the Spirit out the doors of our churches and tried to do it all on our own strength.

And just who out there on the street is impressed with that? Our bankrupt results speak for themselves.