"I am the Vine"
Will pastors emulate Jeremiah in '09?
Submitted by Wayne on Tue, 2008-12-30 10:48.
Church
Dave Welch asks, "Will pastors emulate Jeremiah in '09?"
No. The American church is getting more lost, not returning to God's Word.
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If not pastors...
Submitted by Wayne on Tue, 2008-12-30 11:21.
If pastors (including seminaries, denominational leadership, congregational leadership, etc.) are the problem, and if the [very rare,] sold-out Jeremiahs are ousted by them, what's the solution, then?
Pray for the church
Submitted by Wayne on Tue, 2008-12-30 13:10.
From http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?... :
In my devotions over the last two or three months, I have started my prayer time by concentrating on the Church. I pray—actually, I plead, the Lord would wake us up, cause us to repent, turn from our own false idols. I pray God’s Spirit would fill us with a burning desire to love Him and advance His kingdom [sic].
Then I pray for my family, who are so dear to me. And then, I pray for my country because my heart aches as I see all that is happening, particularly with the economic crisis and the wrong way we’re going about solving it.
It was on my knees a few months ago that God hit me like a 10-ton truck about the priority praying for the Church first. We can’t pray for our nation to be revived, to be saved, to receive God’s mercy; we can’t pray for our leaders to make wise decisions unless we first pray for the Church.
...
I want to put it in the plainest terms I know how: This nation cannot be saved unless the Church is first revived. Renewing the Church is the key to saving America.
I no longer know for sure that America has a special place in God’s sovereign plan for the world. I could argue that we have in the past. No other nation has played such a positive role—from helping the poor to defeating tyranny to stopping the spread of disease (just like we’re doing in Africa today in the fight against AIDS).
...
For if the Church continues to embrace the ways of the world, I don’t see how America can maintain its place in the world-—much less survive in it.
Pastors are the Problem, Not the Solution
Dave Welch said in the WorldNet Daily article, "Religious and cultural pluralism exacerbated by seeker-friendly, market-driven and church-growth trends have so weakened the institutional church that we are still right where Schaeffer indicated we were when he wrote those words nearly 40 years ago." I agree with this and with Francis Schaeffer quoted early in the article. The flaw in Welch's final assertion that the pastors need to "speak as Jeremiah" is that they won't because they are the same pastors who created the seeker friendly, market-driven and church-growth trends. What the Church needs is "a Jeremiah" who will preach to the Christians who attend but fail to walk a Christian walk. When the Christians who attend churches begin to actually walk the walk and live their lives wholly sold out to Christ, then they can begin to bring other non-believers into the Church.