Retort of the Sith
Bunnie's post on the Church of St. Chewbacca, aka Epic (Not-Lutheran-So's-You'd- Notice-It) Church has drawn the attention of some of its members- and they aren't happy!
The comments make a fascinating read. No surprises, of course; just an unmitigated theology of glory, claiming validation on the basis of the world's approval with no sense whatsoever that neither Jesus nor two thousand years of the Church's experience exactly validates popularity with the world as a measure of spiritual value.
The arguments raised there are depressingly familiar. They are "reaching" people, they say. But with what? The Epic members involved in this thread fail to display even a tenuous grasp on the basics of the Faith. That is no surprise. The glorification of glitz and the contempt for substance seems, after all, in the last analysis to be the whole program here.
The congregation's approach seems to promote shallowness as an essential strategy. Jesus didn't mince His words for anybody; these folks seem convinced that if we can simply say and do things people respond positively to, it doesn't matter that what we end up presenting them with isn't the Gospel anymore.
It's no surprise that being clobbered over the head with the Law is less popular than cuddly Wookies and vapidly contemporary music calculated to make people feel good. The trouble is, of course, that until people are confronted with the bad news of the Law, the Good News of the Gospel isn't good news. It isn't even comprehensible.
So the question remains: reaching people with what?
The Pharisees get called upon to help out, as they always do when people innovate for the sake of innovation and are unable to defend that innovation on its own merits. The Pharisees supposedly opposed change, so anybody who opposes change- however ill-considered- must therefore be a Pharisee. It seems that we who disapprove of the ersatz Gospel of Church Growthism and are sufficiently out of it to insist on the formula Jesus prescribed for outreach- baptizing and teaching- are automatically wrong because we oppose innovation. Never mind that it was Jesus, not the Pharisees, who insisted on confronting God's Word in all its messy, inconvenient, appalling substance, and the Pharisees, not Jesus, who wanted to force God into a mold sinful human beings could live with.
In short, the Pharisees were rather like those who- in the words of one Epic member who posted on Bunnie's site- think their mission is to "challenge" people to do better, instead of dealing with the spiritual leprosy which lies at the very core of the human predicament, and is curable only by daily death and resurrection- by resort to our Baptism for forgiveness and renewal.
Growth- specifically numerical growth- is apparently valued above all else. The unspoken assumption seems to be that if one can simply be gotten to join and attend a church on whatever terms work, evangelism has been done. The flattering of the flesh through the issuance of a "challenge" to live a "Christian life" is seen as a substitute for being confronted with the fact that one has not, and cannot, in oneself- and offered a Savior from that failure. This watered-down, doable version of the Law shows nobody their need for Jesus, and while such flattering of the flesh doubtless can produce numbers, one is compelled to ask exactly where in the New Testament numbers are said to be our objective- especially if, by definition, we achieve them by telling people essentially what they want to hear.
The kind of growth this stuff promotes is essentially analogous to cancer. Tumors grow quickly, too- but lacking the wholesome characteristics of normal, healthy tissue, they end up finally destroying life rather than enabling it.
And that, essentially, is what seems to be the Epic mentality finally produces: spiritual cancer. When a theology of glory, which seeks validation in numbers, crowds out the humble, faithful business of baptizing and teaching Jesus put forward in the Great Commission as His program for spreading the Gospel, the world may well applaud, and even beat a pathway to one's door. But there is nothing healthy about the kind of growth that results, and nothing life-giving, either.
Now a new objection has been raised by an Epic member: that we are judging the church only by its website, and not by direct experience. Well, yes. We're taking Epic's word, and that of its members, for what it is.
If it is something else, it would be well to present itself as that, and not as the travesty it advertises itself as being. The question, in the last analysis, is whether people are brought to Christ by the Word and the Sacraments, or by gimmicks and human salesmanship. The issue is the same today as when Charles Finney first introduced this nonsense long ago.
There is nothing new under the sun- and that includes all the gimmicks and human salesmanship at Epic (Not-Lutheran-So's-You'd-Notice It) Church and its ilk.
The comments make a fascinating read. No surprises, of course; just an unmitigated theology of glory, claiming validation on the basis of the world's approval with no sense whatsoever that neither Jesus nor two thousand years of the Church's experience exactly validates popularity with the world as a measure of spiritual value.
The arguments raised there are depressingly familiar. They are "reaching" people, they say. But with what? The Epic members involved in this thread fail to display even a tenuous grasp on the basics of the Faith. That is no surprise. The glorification of glitz and the contempt for substance seems, after all, in the last analysis to be the whole program here.
The congregation's approach seems to promote shallowness as an essential strategy. Jesus didn't mince His words for anybody; these folks seem convinced that if we can simply say and do things people respond positively to, it doesn't matter that what we end up presenting them with isn't the Gospel anymore.
It's no surprise that being clobbered over the head with the Law is less popular than cuddly Wookies and vapidly contemporary music calculated to make people feel good. The trouble is, of course, that until people are confronted with the bad news of the Law, the Good News of the Gospel isn't good news. It isn't even comprehensible.
So the question remains: reaching people with what?
The Pharisees get called upon to help out, as they always do when people innovate for the sake of innovation and are unable to defend that innovation on its own merits. The Pharisees supposedly opposed change, so anybody who opposes change- however ill-considered- must therefore be a Pharisee. It seems that we who disapprove of the ersatz Gospel of Church Growthism and are sufficiently out of it to insist on the formula Jesus prescribed for outreach- baptizing and teaching- are automatically wrong because we oppose innovation. Never mind that it was Jesus, not the Pharisees, who insisted on confronting God's Word in all its messy, inconvenient, appalling substance, and the Pharisees, not Jesus, who wanted to force God into a mold sinful human beings could live with.
In short, the Pharisees were rather like those who- in the words of one Epic member who posted on Bunnie's site- think their mission is to "challenge" people to do better, instead of dealing with the spiritual leprosy which lies at the very core of the human predicament, and is curable only by daily death and resurrection- by resort to our Baptism for forgiveness and renewal.
Growth- specifically numerical growth- is apparently valued above all else. The unspoken assumption seems to be that if one can simply be gotten to join and attend a church on whatever terms work, evangelism has been done. The flattering of the flesh through the issuance of a "challenge" to live a "Christian life" is seen as a substitute for being confronted with the fact that one has not, and cannot, in oneself- and offered a Savior from that failure. This watered-down, doable version of the Law shows nobody their need for Jesus, and while such flattering of the flesh doubtless can produce numbers, one is compelled to ask exactly where in the New Testament numbers are said to be our objective- especially if, by definition, we achieve them by telling people essentially what they want to hear.
The kind of growth this stuff promotes is essentially analogous to cancer. Tumors grow quickly, too- but lacking the wholesome characteristics of normal, healthy tissue, they end up finally destroying life rather than enabling it.
And that, essentially, is what seems to be the Epic mentality finally produces: spiritual cancer. When a theology of glory, which seeks validation in numbers, crowds out the humble, faithful business of baptizing and teaching Jesus put forward in the Great Commission as His program for spreading the Gospel, the world may well applaud, and even beat a pathway to one's door. But there is nothing healthy about the kind of growth that results, and nothing life-giving, either.
Now a new objection has been raised by an Epic member: that we are judging the church only by its website, and not by direct experience. Well, yes. We're taking Epic's word, and that of its members, for what it is.
If it is something else, it would be well to present itself as that, and not as the travesty it advertises itself as being. The question, in the last analysis, is whether people are brought to Christ by the Word and the Sacraments, or by gimmicks and human salesmanship. The issue is the same today as when Charles Finney first introduced this nonsense long ago.
There is nothing new under the sun- and that includes all the gimmicks and human salesmanship at Epic (Not-Lutheran-So's-You'd-Notice It) Church and its ilk.
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