9 Marks of an Unhealthy Church
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I believe DeYoung is unbalanced here:
I’m concerned when a congregation gets tired of hearing about the Trinity, the atonement, the new birth, or the resurrection and wants to hear another long series on handling stress or the 70 weeks in Daniel.
The whole council of God certainly includes a great deal of prophesy, so why not spend some time discussing it? Reformed folks seem to spend very little time on prophesy, and that’s a shame. I believe that, in some respects, that’s the result of a pendulum swing away from the excesses of some dispensationalists - who seem to live and breathe nothing but prophesy. Still, not spending appropriate time on prophesy results in an unbalanced diet for the people. It’s there. Preach and explain it.
Guess what? You can also add the Trinity, the atonement and the New Covenant in there, because they tie into the God’s program for Israel in the 70 weeks. Imagine that!
This is a good article, but I think it betrays a downgrading of prophesy that, ironically, is a bit unhealthy!
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Couldn’t agree more Tyler. The current trend to relegate prophecy to “things indifferent” is really unfortunate. The sheer volume alone of prophecy necessitates its teaching.
Coming from churches and conferences that spent inordinate amounts of time on parsing Revelation and trying to figure out the date of the Rapture, then factoring in the fascination with books/movies like the Left Behind series, I understand that comment. For every expositional Gospel centered message, I heard 5 about who the whore of Babylon and anti-Christ would be, and most other messages were topical.
I think it is now safe to say that Henry Kissinger is not going to be the anti-Christ.
I’d say his list of warning signs are accurate. One or two issues may be temporary problems because hey- humans. But visible and ongoing problems of instability or lack of transparency and accountability are A Big Clue that more is probably going on under the surface.
I think what you described is exactly what DeYoung was warning about. That kind of thing is unbalanced.
On the other hand, I wonder how much time Reformed churches do spend on prophesy? Any Reformed folks out there want to chime in? Do you wish your Pastor could walk through Daniel’s 70 weeks with you, or have you never heard a sermon which explains it? Does your Pastor avoid prophetic passages? Does he sort of wave them away and make snide comments about the Left Behind series whenever the topic comes up, in an attempt to deflect?
In other words, does your Reformed pastor broad-brush Biblical prophesy and try to hurry past it the same way a dispensationalist deals with (1) whether (and how) the New Covenant is in effect today, or (2) why there will be sacrifices in Ezekiel’s temple in the Millennium?!
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
With all the nuttiness one can find among fundamentalists, he gets worried about 70 weeks? :^)
Seriously, majoring on the minors is a HUGE issue in fundamentalism, and it’s a big bummer that he doesn’t hit on something that’s more common. So i take his general point very well (OK, it was something I was thinking already, yes), but am puzzled at his example.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I think dealing with prophesy is unavoidable. The church we are visiting is Reformed, and last year the pastor finished preaching through Matthew. Prophecy was part of that, and he didn’t shy away from it at all. If a pastor/teacher is avoiding prophesy, then they would have to hokey-pokey through the Bible, which would look very strange.
I think the reason some enjoy an emphasis on prophecy is that they can disconnect from it. Revelation can be like reading a scifi novel while under the influence of mind-altering substances, and I can imagine that some people look at it like any other post-apocalyptic tale, which are always hugely popular, and make me wonder why we as a society are so fascinated with the concept of global destruction. But that’s another topic entirely.
[TylerR]I believe DeYoung is unbalanced here:
I’m concerned when a congregation gets tired of hearing about the Trinity, the atonement, the new birth, or the resurrection and wants to hear another long series on handling stress or the 70 weeks in Daniel.
The whole council of God certainly includes a great deal of prophesy, so why not spend some time discussing it? Reformed folks seem to spend very little time on prophesy, and that’s a shame. I believe that, in some respects, that’s the result of a pendulum swing away from the excesses of some dispensationalists - who seem to live and breathe nothing but prophesy. Still, not spending appropriate time on prophesy results in an unbalanced diet for the people. It’s there. Preach and explain it.
Guess what? You can also add the Trinity, the atonement and the New Covenant in there, because they tie into the God’s program for Israel in the 70 weeks. Imagine that!
This is a good article, but I think it betrays a downgrading of prophesy that, ironically, is a bit unhealthy!
I suspect that when you reject the basic tenets of prophecy through an A-millennial approach to Scripture, it does become a peripheral issue. Whole swaths of the Old Testament become murky metaphors instead of comforting and riveting truth about a Covenant keeping God.
What Wayne says. If one views most of prophecy in the covenant theology way of assuming the church is Israel and all that, it’s awfully hard to get that excited about it. That said, I remember going through Daniel a while back with a friend who was all into prophecy, and it struck me that what I needed to do was to get him out of “science fiction mode” and ask him what it meant for his own life.
Lots of quiet moments when I asked that, but I think I got through to a degree.
Speaking of this kind of thing, what really makes me cringe is stuff like Hagee’s “Four Blood Moons”, which appears to be little more than a loose correlation of astronomical events with current events and not much Biblical basis for it. More or less the fundagelical world’s answer to the NSA’s spying on us trying to find statistical correlations. Yuck.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
If this was my list of unhealthy signs, I would have included the church bent on looking to the secular culture to learn how we should do church and accomplish ministry. I don’t know how pop culture can help the church offer better worship music to God. I don’t see the pop culture helping the church with strategies for counseling people through their struggles with sin. What advantage is it to the church to embrace secular approaches to getting unchurched people to attend services? Really? Don’t we have a better resource for how we should live out Christianity? Doesn’t the Bible tell us how to disciple and how to worship? Once a church looks to pop culture for wise leadership, it has begun the process of being reached by pop culture instead of reaching it with God’s truth. Pragmatism will take over, and the unhealthy church will shrivel and decline in its spiritual vitality.
Darrel- amen to this “If this was my list of unhealthy signs, I would have included the church bent on looking to the secular culture to learn how we should do church and accomplish ministry.”
The church isn’t a mirror of secular culture, it is to be set apart!
[Wayne Wilson]I’m Amillennial and I do not reject “the basic tenets of prophecy.” Whatever that means.TylerR wrote:
I believe DeYoung is unbalanced here:
I’m concerned when a congregation gets tired of hearing about the Trinity, the atonement, the new birth, or the resurrection and wants to hear another long series on handling stress or the 70 weeks in Daniel.
The whole council of God certainly includes a great deal of prophesy, so why not spend some time discussing it? Reformed folks seem to spend very little time on prophesy, and that’s a shame. I believe that, in some respects, that’s the result of a pendulum swing away from the excesses of some dispensationalists - who seem to live and breathe nothing but prophesy. Still, not spending appropriate time on prophesy results in an unbalanced diet for the people. It’s there. Preach and explain it.
Guess what? You can also add the Trinity, the atonement and the New Covenant in there, because they tie into the God’s program for Israel in the 70 weeks. Imagine that!
This is a good article, but I think it betrays a downgrading of prophesy that, ironically, is a bit unhealthy!
I suspect that when you reject the basic tenets of prophecy through an A-millennial approach to Scripture, it does become a peripheral issue. Whole swaths of the Old Testament become murky metaphors instead of comforting and riveting truth about a Covenant keeping God.
[TylerR]As a Reformed guy, I love Biblical prophesy. My favorite sermon series is one preached on Revelation by Arturo Azurdia. Excellent stuff. Kim Riddlebarger is good on Daniel as well. You might not agree with his interpretation, but you can’t deny that he gets into the text and is more than willing to deal with the difficult sections.I think what you described is exactly what DeYoung was warning about. That kind of thing is unbalanced.
On the other hand, I wonder how much time Reformed churches do spend on prophesy? Any Reformed folks out there want to chime in? Do you wish your Pastor could walk through Daniel’s 70 weeks with you, or have you never heard a sermon which explains it? Does your Pastor avoid prophetic passages? Does he sort of wave them away and make snide comments about the Left Behind series whenever the topic comes up, in an attempt to deflect?
In other words, does your Reformed pastor broad-brush Biblical prophesy and try to hurry past it the same way a dispensationalist deals with (1) whether (and how) the New Covenant is in effect today, or (2) why there will be sacrifices in Ezekiel’s temple in the Millennium?!
My own church is rather SBC in flavor, not particularly Reformed, and I think they actually talk far less about prophesy than many Reformed churches I’ve known.
…..is, per what Jim noted in the thread about how to lead change effectively, I’d phrase it as “my way or the highway” leadership, or as a still member of a church I’ve left noted, “there can only be one leader.” Well, yes, but isn’t that leader supposed to be Christ?
Really, dictatorial leadership is a key factor in all nine of the marks mentioned by this article. Really, if a leader cannot point to an authority outside himself or “consensus” in what he does, you’ve probably got this problem.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
[Darrell Post]Doesn’t the Bible tell us how to disciple and how to worship?
It certainly gives us the principles of discipleship and worship, but it doesn’t necessarily give us the methods. In other words, we aren’t told to worship in song with piano and organ and disciple through Sunday School.
[RickyHorton]Darrell Post wrote:
Doesn’t the Bible tell us how to disciple and how to worship?
It certainly gives us the principles of discipleship and worship, but it doesn’t necessarily give us the methods. In other words, we aren’t told to worship in song with piano and organ and disciple through Sunday School.
My point is the church is on a fool’s errand if it goes to the very culture we are trying to reach searching for the principles or methods to reach it. This pop-culture we are in will inevitably suggest principles and methods that run contrary to Scripture. We should expect no less. Unbelievers have no spiritual discernment and have no business being the fountain of wisdom for Christians trying to live out Christianity.
Discussion