By Mark W. Christy, PhD
Nowadays, every church (or so it seems) wants to be that next mega-church, and every pastor is often judged solely by the number of those in attendance. This hyper-focus on numerical results has coincided with a devaluation in the biblical appeals for Godly character, soundness in doctrine, and steadfastness in proclamation. Instead of these biblical qualities which should be exhibited by pastors and reproduced in the laity, the qualities that now achieve prominence include one’s personality, evangelistic achievements (as if it were them who caused someone to become saved, and as if numerical growth is a valid sign of actual increases in those being saved), and indoctrination into the big church mentality.
Across America, it is not uncommon to hear many churches proclaim the Great Commission while they constantly motivate their membership to go and make disciples. For many of them, this call is focused exclusively on increasing the number of converts (and by extension pew-sitting attenders) to their weekly gatherings. While no one could argue from Scripture that churches should not actively share the gospel and gather those being saved into congregations, they also could not argue that the church’s mission ends after having done these things. This being the case, faithful, evangelistic churches must avoid a hyper-focus on evangelism that causes them to somehow alter the gospel, sidestep doctrine, or devalue God.
Observing the increasing number of churches who are straying from proper doctrinal commitments so as to obtain larger numbers, John MacArthur writes, “The Lord’s evangelistic methodology is in striking contrast to that of today’s pop church approach. Pastors and evangelists, pursuing mass responses, seek to eliminate barriers and make it as easy as possible for people to respond to the message. Jesus, however, did the opposite. He made extreme, exclusive, and absolute statements to discourage superficial responders.”[1]
MacArthur’s criticism of these pastors and evangelists is well-placed, but then again it is hardly surprising given the hiring criteria of many pastor search committees. Unlike those who pursue secular vocations, pastors are often selected by committee members who have little or no knowledge of the pastoral vocation. Even worse, many, especially given the lack of solid instruction in today’s churches, have little capacity to adequately assess a potential candidate’s theology. Amazingly, many of these committees seem to believe that finding a candidate who is above reproach and therefore keeps the Lord’s commands to be all but a non-issue because apparently (at least in their misguided thoughts) this standard is easily achievable (cf. 1 Tim 6:14; Titus 1:7). Therefore, all manner of other criteria must be added to the list of qualifications for prospective pastors.
These qualifications, of course, are not always without practical merit. Even so, the comparatively little weight assigned to the absolute necessity of Godly character becomes almost overwhelming when one examines many current job postings for positions in evangelical church leadership. Whereas the Bible would place vital importance on the maintenance of Godly leadership in the church so as to ensure its holiness, modern churches have shifted their focus just as MacArthur has already alluded to.
Unfortunately, while many churches will ardently affirm their desire for a pastor with godly character and sound knowledge of Scripture, the many job postings of churches seeking pastors would demonstrate otherwise as these qualities are more or less assumed. Instead of focusing exclusively on these qualities as Paul did, the majority of the attention in these job postings is given to abiblical qualities that are believed to be helpful in improving the church’s attendance and keeping those already in attendance satisfied.
Faced with massive declines in attendance, many churches have trended toward viewing a pastor’s abiblical qualities as essential to his being effective in their all-consuming goal of filling seats (or to put this in the way it is often portrayed, their goal of fulfilling the Great Commission). Though misconstrued, this motive is, of course, understandable. Afterall, who wants to sit in a church week after week when the pews remain largely empty when everyone feels better and more like God is present when attendance keeps increasing?
Aware of these additional abiblical job requirements, pastors know that in one way or the other they will be judged by the ebb and flow of attendance. To put this in a more ‘damning’ way, they know what it takes to be the idol that is sought. Therefore, they know if they develop in line with these expectations and if they pull out all of the stops and achieve numerical growth (no matter the costs), they can be assured longevity, opportunities to speak at conferences, book writing agreements, and easy transfer to other more prominent church positions as they work themselves up the ladder of success.
With pressure from the world and the pew, pastors have increasingly become those who bend the knee to the world. Having done so, their sermons have become motivational speeches and feel-good messages where training in doctrine has become totally sidelined. Instead of standing firm in the faith and offending those who would pridefully disdain the truth, these pastors avoid any of the more edgy cultural hot button issues in favor of teaching series that have broad appeal. Given their desire (and their mandate from the church) to always be growing attendance, they oversimplify the gospel, deemphasize sin, overemphasize God’s love at the expense of His holiness, and negate the practice of church discipline.
As a result of this cheapening of the pastorate, Christianity has become increasingly weaker. When one reads the letters of Paul and the other New Testament epistles, one finds first century pastors constantly reinforcing sound doctrine while rebuking those in error. Along with these activities, these pastors refused to allow their congregations to become shallow in their commitment to Christ and lackadaisical in their pursuit of holiness. By way of illustration, they were like a tough middle or high school teacher that could never hope to receive commendation for being the student’s favorite teacher because students (at least those today) will always favor the teacher who lets them play. Instead of running after fanfare, good middle and high school teachers, just like the New Testament epistle writers, strive to make sure the curriculum is fully digested irrespective of whether they are liked in the immediate present.
Behaving like students who pick their favorite teachers based upon their propensity for keeping them happy though ignorant, many church members have their eyes solely fixed upon their experience in worship. For them, so long as they come away from a typical worship experience with a general sense of having been uplifted, they are good to go. For many of them, this is unfortunately all they know since this is the sort of experience that they have only known. This being the case, they increasingly center their church lives around their worship experience.
As this continues, more and more churches are reporting decreases in small group attendance. Since their members have learned to pursue satiation of themselves in the worship experience and have come to see church as merely a tool for such satiation, they see little need to spend their valuable time in a small group bible study. These wrongly held attitudes are often even further supported when they do attend because they often find that the teachers have inadequate training and the curriculum is skin-deep at best.
Recognizing this problem, many churches are increasingly seeking to hire discipleship pastors to somehow come and save the day. This, however, is no small task. Afterall, the discipleship pastor is supposed to train the membership in doctrine much like the pastor. This all seems fine until one realizes that many pastors are poorly trained in doctrine themselves. Ignoring these factors, these churches focus almost exclusively on simply getting people involved while the people themselves lack knowledge of the biblical reasons why their deeper involvement with one another is so vital to their own discipleship process. In the end, it seems that these churches simply push for increased small group attendance as yet another means to drive forward their goal of achieving still more numerical attendance.
In all of this, the losers are the faithful disciples who come to church to grow in the knowledge and grace of God. Instead of being confronted in their sin when necessary and being challenged toward the development of an increasingly sound theology, they can only expect (at best) to receive commonly accepted doctrines with little in the way of deeper training in these matters. As they look around them, they can be assured that most of those gathered will be well-trained in putting on a good show as if they have mastered what it means to be faithful and simply need a weekly recharge of their batteries. In such an environment, the overwhelming lack of vulnerability will only cause the faithful remnant to struggle still further in their own salvation because unlike others (so they think) they are still struggling with doubts and sin.
This resounding failure of churches to be the Church for those who are actually true disciples has been reverberating throughout ecclesiastical history. During his day, Spurgeon lamented the increasing laxity in the churches of his day and famously left the Baptist Union due to what has been labelled the downgrade controversy, a name taken from Spurgeon’s article series in The Sword and the Trowel. During his famous clash with the liberal church of his day, he wrote, “In reference to ministers, many church-members are indifferent as to the personal piety of the preacher; what they want is talent or cleverness. What the man preaches does not matter now; he must draw a crowd, or please the elite, and that is enough. Cleverness is the main thing. One would think they were looking for a conjuror rather than a pastor. Whether he preaches truth or error, the man is held in admiration so long as he can talk glibly, and keep up a reputation as a speaker. If we had truer piety in members and deacons, pretenders would soon take their wares to other markets.”[2]
When Spurgeon announced his departure from the Baptist Union, the Council for the Baptist Union voted to affirm his departure, and then voted to censure him. Of the approximate one hundred in attendance for those votes, only five chose to support Spurgeon. Such was his reward, at least in this life, for standing on truth and confronting error in the church of his day. The cold reception to his biblical astute and timely criticism apparently did not catch him off his guard for he says, “Of course, everybody admires Luther! Yes, yes. But you do not want anyone else to do the same today.” Then he writes, “But such a man today is a nuisance and must be put down. Call him a narrow-minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one.”[3]
Much like in Spurgeon’s day, the Church is greatly in need of pastors who will bravely take upon themselves the role of Luther along with the consequences that are sure to follow. As they bravely proclaim the truth and admonish the laity, they must endure the blowback, even if their livelihoods become threatened. Likewise, churches must humble themselves and seek ministers who have such a pedigree and demonstrate this by their willingness to speak truth in season and out of season. For the pastoral search committees of such churches, they must look away from those ministers who are clothed with the success so common to those who fail to firmly uphold truth in the face of opposition and look deeper into the character and doctrines of their prospective candidates.
[1]John MacArthur, Luke 11-17, in The MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago: Moody, 2013). in See his comments on Luke 14:25-35.
[2]Charles H. Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry: Addresses to Ministers and Students (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1906), 215.
[3]Ibid., “Holding Fast the Faith,” The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 34 (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1888), 83-84.