The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:1-3, \u201cAnd I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people<\/i> but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it,<\/i> and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal.\u201d\u00a0 An old minister once remarked to me, \u201cI don\u2019t mind feeding them milk, but I hate to part their whiskers to do it.\u201d\u00a0 Of course, he was implying that they ought to have grown enough in spiritual maturity to be able to consume deeper preaching and teaching.\u00a0 I believe the same could be said about the present crop of professing Christians.\u00a0 However, the current trend in church growth is to give them milk.<\/p>\n
It reminds me of a channel on our Roku that has nothing but children\u2019s videos.\u00a0 It presents a number of videos with familiar children\u2019s tunes such as \u201cTwinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.\u201d\u00a0 The colors are bright and large and move about with the music.\u00a0 My youngest granddaughter fascinated by it.\u00a0 I turned it on the other day and my now 7-year-old granddaughter couldn’t take her eyes off of it.\u00a0 This is what church meetings have become to a great extent.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about visuals, smoke rising from the stage during worship music, large video screens, and benign messages that end quickly with no embarrassing alter calls.\u00a0 People bring their iPads, Kindles, and smart phones to the services.\u00a0 Some preachers even allow people to text them while they are preaching.\u00a0 The focus is no longer on God and His word, but on a high tech way to manage the meetings so that it all approves of and fits well inside the attention span of the congregants.<\/p>\n
The \u201cexperts\u201d declare that it is the best way to reach the so-called unchurched and Generations X, Y, and Z. \u00a0Generation X was born after the Baby Boomers and ended in the early 80s.\u00a0 Generation Y, also called the millennials, ranges from the 80s to 2000.\u00a0 Now there is Generation Z, the high tech generation.\u00a0 Maybe the \u201cexperts\u201d are right when it comes to numerical growth.\u00a0 A church can be launched (a term for a popular church planting program) and within weeks it will have enough attendees to pay the bills.\u00a0 In a few months, it outstrips the neighboring churches in attendance and can grow into a mega church if properly managed.\u00a0 Add a few social programs to make everyone feel as though they are making a difference, and presto<\/i>, it is assumed that there is a new force in the religious sector.\u00a0 Never mind that they empty other churches to build their church, it has all the marks of success, excitement, full parking lots, and a lot of busy-ness.<\/p>\n
But is this what it is all about?\u00a0 Is it about cramming people into a building, dazzling them with music, videos, and high tech gadgets, and then feed them a little milk and send them on their way?\u00a0 Can an army of babies fight the type of battle that is not only raging at the present in Christianity , but is certain to become more intense and widespread?\u00a0 Most professing Christians involved in these types of churches have no clue as to the source of their belief system (if they have one at all) and cannot properly defend it.\u00a0 They are finicky, high maintenance\/low productivity, individuals that cannot even identify heresy or the heretic that brings it.\u00a0 Most of them will accept whatever is preached or taught without question as long as it does not convict them or otherwise make them feel uncomfortable.\u00a0 The majority came out of spiritually comatose traditional churches and the rest came out of the world system.\u00a0 In all likelihood they had no spiritual birthday.\u00a0 They wandered in, drawn like a bug to a night light, and felt comfortable enough to stay.\u00a0 Of course, that is the whole point of the Launch and Seeker-friendly churches. It is not to bring people into the Kingdom of God, but to stack them into a church building for a short period on Sunday morning.\u00a0 It\u2019s a social event, like going to a play or a Christmas concert.<\/p>\n
I confess that I do not know to what extent high technology should be involved in a church meeting.\u00a0 That is really not my point.\u00a0 Instead, I am pointing out the fact that it does not matter how a church draws a crowd if they come empty and leave the same way.\u00a0 When the atmosphere presents such a cavalier attitude toward God and His word, and there is no passion, anointing, and conviction, there will be no spiritual progress.\u00a0 If the leaders of the church do not take God\u2019s word serious, do not have a passion, and do not pray and seek God for anointing, why should anyone else take the whole affair of \u201cchurch\u201d seriously?\u00a0 Someone might ask, \u201cBut, won\u2019t the spiritual babes also go the heaven?\u201d\u00a0 I suppose so, if they are not devoured first (1 Peter 5:8).\u00a0 Another consequence of luring babes with visuals and feeding them pabulum is that the church at large becomes infected with a consortium of heretical influences that further separate people from God\u2019s word and purpose.<\/p>\n
That is what I am observing today.\u00a0 There are so many diabolical doctrines and practices flowing unchecked into Christianity that it cannot possible survive much longer.\u00a0 Truth is being called falsehood and falsehood is being called truth.\u00a0 Scriptural prayer is being destroyed with a pagan substitute.\u00a0 Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, Contemplative Spirituality, and other influences from the New Age Movement have been repackaged, relabeled, and are being accepted at an alarming rate by highly influential church leaders.\u00a0 Some churches have become so infested with heresy and blatant wickedness that they can no longer be considered Christian institutions.\u00a0 Entire denominations are being swayed and converted to a mixture of Christianity and paganism.\u00a0 Not only is there little resistance from the church members and denominational adherents, but few are willing to listen to the truth about what is occurring.\u00a0 Maybe if it was presented with a bit of smoke and high tech gadgetry they would listen.\u00a0 Even then, most of them would be too weak spiritually to do anything about it.<\/p>\n
I have been asked repeatedly what can be done about the situation.\u00a0 There is only one answer; people have to return to making God first in their lives.\u00a0 Everything that distracts from that goal must be rejected.\u00a0 The high tech church is not a problem in and of itself.\u00a0 It is the fascination and even obsession with throwing away the old methods and everything that is involved with them.\u00a0 I agree that each generation has to find its own way to do the will of God.\u00a0 However, they must realize that the old methods worked for the older generations because they made Christ the center of all that they did.\u00a0 That part cannot be thrown away along with the old methods.\u00a0 The virtues must not be discarded with the relics of a past generations quest to please God.\u00a0 If there is no passion for God, there will never be a God-honored purpose.\u00a0 If there is no God-honored purpose, there will never be enough spiritual fire to spark a revival.\u00a0 As one someone once said, \u201cEvery generation needs its own revival; God has no grandchildren.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:1-3, \u201cAnd I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paIm2N-6i","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions\/391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}