Change, Change, Change 1 Samuel 17:33

Change, change, change.

1st Samuel 17:33-37

Many Churches today are feeling the need to “Change with the times.” This is because many believe that the historical way of doing Church is either, “backwoods”, “corny”, or even “bland.” When I say historical, I am referring to the fact that up until recent years, a Church service was about praising and glorifying God. Churches are no longer interested in doing Church this way because they feel it does not “reach the community.” Well, I must disagree. We have been studying First Samuel on Wednesday nights and one of the major themes in the book is that God is the one who gives his anointed one the victory. People feel that they must water down Church and pollute their worship so that it is man centered in order to reach their community.

 
Allow me to ask a question. If Jesus Christ is as wonderful as we say he is then why must we decorate him to be hip, cool, or trendy? Isn’t He enough? There are many fallacies with trying to put Jesus Christ into a costume, but those shall be addressed in later articles, for now we will focus on why people are doing this.
The reason for this is that many of our friends in the Church growth movement have taken the attitude that Saul had when David was getting ready to fight Goliath. “Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.” While this was a legitimate concern for Saul, what Saul did not realize is that David was already a mighty warrior because the LORD had been getting him ready. Not the conventional way, but ready nonetheless. Many Pastor’s don’t’ really feel that God will move at all today with anything supernatural. That is the major problem with the modern day Church growth. People no longer believe that God will save souls to grow the Church, so they must find a way to attract them from other Churches.

 
David responded to Saul by letting him know what God had done in the past and that God was STILL able to do it in the present/future. “The LORD that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” Yes! God is still able to deliver his people, just like he grew the Church in the Book of Acts, so it is that he can grow the Church in 2010. We don’t need fancy gimmicks; we don’t need millions of dollars. What we need is men and women who will stand up and open their mouth, and tell people about the Gospel - not for the sake of having a big Church, but out of their love for the Lord and their love for people.

-Rick Coker, Associate Pastor