Monday, June 29, 2015

Viewpoint: Good Motives Gone Bad


The adage tells us that there is a destination, the road to which is paved with good intentions. It is the destination that we would prefer not to reach. Good intentions can have disastrous results and consequences. When we look at the revolution of worship in America today, I see a dangerous road that is built with such intentions. The good purposes that have transformed worship in America have as their goal to reach a lost world—a world that is marked by baby boomers and Generation Xers who have in many ways rejected traditional forms and styles of worship. Many have found the life of the church to be irrelevant and boring, and so an effort to meet the needs of these people has driven some radical changes in how we worship God.

Perhaps the most evident model developed over the last half century is that model defined as the “seeker-sensitive model.” Seekers are defined as those people who are unbelievers and are outside of the church but who are searching for meaning and significance to their lives. The good intention of reaching such people with evangelistic techniques that include the reshaping of Sunday morning worship fails to understand some significant truths set forth in Scripture. Keep reading
I tagged this article as a "viewpoint" because there are those who believe that unbelievers may attend a church's worship gathering out of the wrong motives and nonetheless hear God's call. God uses human beings as the instruments through which he calls people to himself and God may use unbelievers' weaknesses, their selfish motives, to bring them to the place where they will hear God's chosen instrument through whom he is going to call them to himself.  After all God's ways are not our ways; his thoughts, not our thoughts. What do you think?

No comments: