Throughout much of the United States (and a few other parts of the
world) evangelical churches quite literally litter the landscape.
Many of these churches are like trash left on a street corner—they
cause people to cross to the other side to avoid them. The people who
belong to them profess to believe in the gospel, and their historic
statements of faith confess the gospel. And some true Christians do
belong to such churches. But on the whole the life of the church
broadcasts anything but a gospel message. These churches instead churn
out toxic waste rather than the nourishing food that people need.
Some churches in this state may be unrecoverable. But the sad thing is,
many evangelicals seem content to ignore such churches and simply start
new ones.
Church planting is important and strategic, and I am glad to see more and more people taking up that work.
But if you saw a garden overrun with weeds, would you simply plant some
nice new irises right in the middle? If you couldn’t hear the news on
TV because your radio was blaring, would you simply turn up the TV?
I would suggest that church revitalization—bringing life to dying
churches by dealing with the causes of decline and building toward
faithfulness—is a biblical burden. That is, when we see these churches
acting as anti-witnesses to Christ, we should, according to Scripture,
have a burden to do something about it. The burden of this article is to prove that point. Keep Reading >>>
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