Bingo! That’s the problem that distracts. Seeing the Gospel as a thing that will “fix” the culture or such. As soon as a pastor, congregation, denomination, local church begins to look in those terms – they have already started down the prim rose path of no longer giving the Gospel (forgiveness of sins) and down that path of “no longer being a church”.

And we see that in MANY denominations today not just the SB. Because the Gospel may in fact, more often than not, turn things upside down. I’m not Lutheran, at least in my official church membership, but I heard a Lutheran once say this was the charge to their pastors, “You are to preach the Gospel (Word and Sacrament), EVEN IF everyone in the church (building) leaves.

But soon as the temptation arises to have “numbers”, ‘effect a local moral goal’, even “produce fruit”, ‘produce a “regenerate church”‘…any of those things…you’ve lost it, you’ve lost the Word of God altogether or will shortly there after.

It goes to the mind set that kind of thinking produces.

Bror, you nailed it on the head!

Yours,

Larry

Thanks.

To me, that is the best thing ever posted on the internet..ever. Please allow me to buy you a virtual soda.

The message must be presented in an understood way within each culture while paying particular attention to the preservation of God’s truth. The two bookends are when believers refuse to take culture into consideration in order to maximize communicative undeerstanding, and when others conform the truth within the culture and it becomes solely understood in the cultural context and continually morphs as does the culture.

We are not called to change the culture, we are called to preach the gospel and allow the Spirit to change the individual. Even when this occurs it does not guarantee a mirrored Biblical culture either within the church or in the community. As is evident in America, even the ecclesiastical culture is wide, varied, and mercurial, even in orthodox circles.

Visit Grace Community one Sunday and Times Square Church the next and see two “fundamentalist” communities with divergent religious cultures. We do not seek cultural uniformity but Christ. Or…we should.

Involved (on the “attending,” not “leading” level) with a church that is directly copying a model seen in two other churches, I think it is my observation that the difficulties are relative to the difference of situation.

Copying a church-model that succeeded in New York city into the major international metropolitan area of Toronto certainly involves situational adaptation–but not nearly to the extent of trying to adapt to the rural Appalacian culture.

And: “They must abandon any strategy of “making” a church in the image of their heroes.”

I agree 100%. Your example specifically involves churches in Appalachia–maybe this principle is more acute there–but I think it’s true everywhere. If a young pastor right out of seminary goes into any church in any location and tries to copy the forms and structures of a famous church, would they not encounter the same kinds of difficulties?

After 30+ years as a pastor, I refer to pastors as “the perennial outsiders,” as most of the time, we’re never really allowed all the way inside (however that may be defined), but are kept at least at arm’s length. That would seem to go double or triple for folks in the situation that you describe.

If a few of the churches grow, how will the others react? Some may catch a new vision, but I’d wager that many others would fall prey to jealousy and criticize the heck out of the “success stories” for being unfaithful, etc.

Lord, have mercy! Christ, have mercy!