This week I have come across two quotes, from two Church of Scotland Ministers (one living and one deceased) which are remarkably similar in spirit, despite being written more than 40 years apart. One is challenging the quality of preaching in contemporary ‘evangelicalism’ (a defining term that doesn’t really say much about anything anymore) and the other was challenging the influence of relativism upon mainstream Church of Scotland Ministers.
On his social media account, Rev Kenny Borthwick posted the following challenge:
How come so many Christian leaders sound like motivational speakers, more like well heeled gurus from the world of business or sport? No mention of Jesus or Scripture: these are replaced by worldly thinking, a mixture of positive thinking mixed with amateurish psychology, to get you to the sweet spot of becoming an influencer, well boundaried for your own protection. It’s a far cry from the Jesus of cross. Influence and safety are not the sweet spot for a believer. They are modern day secular idols creeping into the church, the opposite of the Jesus way. The Jesus way is not safe. its aim is not to have calculated and engineered friendships or envy creating influence at any cost. Do you need to pull some very enticing idols down?
Kenny is burning a mountain of sacred cows in this post. He is challenging ministry ambition, ministry motivation, and ministry content. Further he is naming this pursuit of relevance the way the Bible does: Idolatry.
What strikes me is how similar the problems are in contemporary evangelicalism to the problems that emerged in the mainstream established churches. Liberalism.
This is quite a striking comparison, because it’s perhaps not obvious to see contemporary ‘lively’ churches as having anything in common with the old mainline denominations. Yet the following quote from the Late Rev William Still is tackling a similar issue to that which is raised by Kenny Borthwick.
William Still wrote:
If the present climate of theological opinion and biblical scholarship is to prevail, we fear that it is going to take many so long to determine what they do believe and what they do not, that this generation may have passed into the Hell about which the modern church is so uncertain, before they can make up their minds. It is the problem of this, the problem of that – all problems, no solutions; all fog and darkness, no light! And, in any case, where is the apostolic conviction to come from in a Gospel of shreds and patches? It is the surrender of the will to intellectual conviction of the Truth which alone inflames men’s hearts and sets them on fire for God. The Gospel will never again run through Scotland and ‘set the heather on fire’ until the men of the Church of Scotland sacrifice their pride of intellect and fall humbly before Him whose Word is too great for us to ever fully understand, and then rise to proclaim simply like faithful errand boys. Heralds do not need great intellects (indeed too much may mar their service!). The defence of God’s Word is with God He will look after that! The proclamation of it is with us, and woe betide us if we fail! For if we do, God will find himself a living Church elsewhere, and by it He will work, and will by-pass us to our everlasting shame! ‘All scripture is God breathed’ says Paul to Timothy, ‘and is profitable.’ No Christian needs more than this to make him an authoritative herald of God’s word. . . May God grant us all to be so convinced, cleansed and inspired by His Word ourselves, that we proclaim it with convicting and converting power, to his glory, not ours.
Both quotes expose a Christless and Bible-less pulpit for what it is: compromise with the world. The contexts may be different, Still was challenging a church that was desperate for academic validation. The academic world at that time was anti-supernaturalist. The ghost of modernism was alive and well. Kenny is challenging those who are looking for validation from the internet. Whether the preacher replaces Christ and scripture with academic ambiguity, or the motivational pop-psychology of the social media influencer, the problems are the same: wrong motivations, wrong methods and ultimately the wrong results.
God has only ordained one method, one motivation and one source for ministry success and that is the preaching of the cross for the glory of God in the power of the Spirit.
Paul puts it this way:
And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a] 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
1 Cor. 2:1-5
Rev John James 