The Church Needs A New Model

CHAPTER 1
HAVE WE LOST SOMETHING?

The cheetah is the fastest animal alive, clocked at some seventy miles per hour. You’re never going to outrun that cat. A cheetah has a rather unusual habit. When she gets hungry she finds a herd of animals in her food chain and makes a selection with keen eyes. Disregarding all the others, the cheetah concentrates on just that one. When ready, she takes off after her choice passing many she could have easily gotten to first. Hunting is a sure thing with the cheetah, because she stays focused. She never takes her eyes off the target until she makes the kill.

I don’t know about you, but when I look at Christ’s church anywhere and almost everywhere I go, I see that we have lost something. I believe that something is focus. The church used to be focused on sin as the problem and Christ—the written and living Word—as the only solution. There are certainly churches today that honor this, but it seems more and more churches have lost this primary purpose. From medium-sized churches on down, it’s a major struggle to keep attendance strong and consistent. Larger churches, while they have more people, how many who attend church are knowledgeable about their faith today?

The church has failed in the area of discipleship. Jesus commanded that we “make disciples” but we don’t know how to accomplish that. Many have tried various methods, but basically none have worked well. Perhaps a handful of dedicated Christians understand our biblical directive, but the Lord commanded the entire church to to be discipled.

We can no longer experiment with discipleship. These days are too critical and demand focus on how to correctly obey Christ’s commission. In case you haven’t noticed, our enemies increase while our popularity decreases. The time has come for Christians to circle the wagons and prepare for serious Christian discipleship.

Let me share a brief scenario of how we got into this mess.

Liberalism began to pick up followers about the end of the nineteenth century. Between the new discoveries in science and so-called biblical criticism, the Christian worldview was rocked to its foundations. Man pointed to science for explanation of our beginning and development. Literary scholarship challenged the validity of scriptural inspiration. Copernicus, Sir Isaac Newton, Hagel, and Darwin left their fingerprints on the foundations of the Christian faith.

Also coming out of the nineteenth century, a group of Christians became known as fundamentalists. While they were a bit legalistic, they held to scriptural inerrancy like bulldogs. Thank God their influence is still felt today.

In the early and mid-twentieth century, conservative biblical scholarship finally achieved firm footing and dispelled many biblical errors made by liberal scholars. European scholars rose up against liberalism to proclaim an experience with Jesus Christ. They believed the Bible to be the word of God only if it spoke to you personally. Otherwise, it was not valid for doctrine. This group called themselves neo-orthodox. Although they directed us back in the right direction, they didn’t go far enough to be effective.
During the late nineteenth century, one systematic theology that gained momentum was called dispensationalism. The great value of this theology was that it brought a literal approach to interpretation of Scripture. Primarily built around a strong study of prophecy, dispensationalism had its share of flaws. Still, it produced some great preaching and teaching. One of its weaknesses, however, was that it taught that the Holy Spirit was no longer giving the gift of speaking in tongues.

Then along came the charismatic movement around the middle of the twentieth century with its heavy emphasis on the Holy Spirit. People began speaking in tongues.

This of course struck at the credibility of dispensationalism, which claimed that the Holy Spirit was no longer moving in that way. Hence some great teaching and preaching seemed to gradually fade away. Unfortunately, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.

This brings us to the new era, namely the late twentieth century, early twenty-first century. I refer to this as a time of confusion. That’s where we are now. No one knows what to believe anymore. This church says one thing. That pastor says another. We seem to be back in the age of preaching by allegory—you can have any theology you want, even a god of your own making as the new agers preach.

Add to this the growth of independent churches where many ministers do not attend seminary or some kind of formal biblical training. This smacks of too little training for an increasingly demanding calling.

College and Grad schools are expensive and demand a time commitment. In our age of instant gratification, people don’t have time for much training anymore, which only adds to the confusion
Too many forces pull the church in opposing directions. We must create better methods of discipleship before the church gets pulled completely apart.