The Cultural Christian / The Cultural Pastor Part 1 of Many

This series of blogs will be long; I make no apology.

He and his three friends pull up in the parking lot early. Obviously not early enough; the lot is packed, and they have to park close to the grass at least a football field away from the show. "Hurry up! Lock it please; I'm gonna leave my bag in the car," he says. They reach the building and get in the back of the line. Through the walls they can hear the beat, beat, beat, beat of the bass from the stage.

Sadly, this isn't a narrative of four guys waiting anxiously in line for the upcoming U2 concert; this is the narrative of four guys waiting in line for their Sunday morning "worship" service.

This is the not-so-new movement that is quickly sweeping through Christendom creating millions of people with a false sense of security in their new found buddy, Jesus. I could go on naming names, such as Walther Kallestad who actually has clowns in worship, Joel Osteen who everso beautifully never touches the word sin, or Rick Warren who can have me entrepeneuring for Jesus in just 40 easy days, but that's not my agenda. My focus is currently on what we see with our own eyes in our own churches. The easy and not so hard to believe truth that is being fed to young and old minds in hopes that the numbers in the bulletin rise for a change instead of drop like they have been in the last few years.

In many churches Sunday morning is no longer a place for believers to gather, humbly but zealously sing songs and hymns that tell of the wondrous salvific work of Christ and scream out our unworthiness and therefore thankfulness to the God who has saved us, a place for believers to stand in humble adoration for Scripture reading and prayer soaked in thankfulness, where we are lead in confession or are able to confess our sins and then hear or sing of our forgiveness that we are graciously granted as we're cleansed in the precious blood of Christ our Lord, where we hear a deep, thoughtful, thought-provoking, 20 hour in preparation Bible exposition that pierces our hearts and prepares us to go out into the world revived and rejuvenated showing the love in us that the Father has for us, where the climax of our fellowship and worship is the Lord's Meal where we commune and take part in the body and blood of Christ reactualizing not only His death on the cross, but the full salvific work, the life, righteousness, suffering, death, the powerful resurrection, and His current reign over all things in Heaven, where the Holy Spirit of God strengthens us and prepares us and teaches us and reveals truth to us and nurtures us and lifts us up, and so on and so on. These things are being lost, and not slowly, but they are being swept out from under our feet!

Worship as the Scriptures know it is being, in many churches, transformed into the tool to appeal to the outside rings in Tom Long's Bullseye (the non-believers and the Sunday morning cultural Christians). The cultural pastor now yells, "No longer is the world supposed to hate us! No longer are we to go out into the world and make our disciples! No longer are we to be persecuted! No longer are we to be a peculiar people! No longer is the Gospel going to be offensive! We are taking matters into our own hands!" Now, these "Christians" no longer have to be ashamed of the Gospel that they know no one wants to hear, because that Gospel no longer exists in their vocabulary. The Good News is now actually "good news". It's user-friendly, easy to hear, and easy to live. It fits in with the lifestyle of the person who says "give me a message on the 'unconditional love' of God and let me go home to the game or give me nothing at all!"

The center of the Long's Bullseye is tiny. And in that very small, hard to hit target are the committed, informed, but most importantly, Spirit-filled, Spirit-regenerated, fed-by-the-Spirit Christians who thrive on every word contained in the Book of hard truths we call the Bible. We hang on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. We arrive at the place we gather longing for the long-awaited sermon, songs, prayer, teachings, fellowship, love, and Meal that God has granted us to partake. We need those 20 or more hours poured into the exposition of Scripture, we need to be lead in our confession of sin, we need to hear of the grace and forgiveness that we receive, we need to hear how our minds should be renewed and how we must spend every day of our lives unconforming to the world outside! Instead, the last thing we need is the very thing we get: CULTURE SOAKED SERVICE. The movement feeds the cravings of the cultural crowd with their cultural music. Some feed them with movies of the day, fun and games, and excitement. Some feed them with the exciting message that God loves everyone no matter what being that God is love and His love must be unconditional (therefore no one goes to hell). Some feed them with whatever it takes to keep them in the building so the number does not fall, because high numbers equal success.