EIGHT

The Lure of Marketing

HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT whenever you ask a fellow Christian these days about his or her church, the subject invariably goes to attendance?

Question: “Tell me about your church. How is the Lord’s work coming along there?”

Answer: “Well, we have about three hundred on Sunday, I’d say.”

When I ask fellow pastors the same question, I get the same answer—plus two others: “Membership is at five-fifty, we’ve just finished a new education wing, and our gross income this year will top out at about four hundred thousand.”

Attendance, buildings, and cash. A-B-C: The new holy trinity.

HOW BIG WAS ANTIOCH?

SUCH A THING WOULD never have happened in Peter and Paul’s day. For one thing, they had no buildings to call their own. They met in people’s homes, in public courtyards, sometimes even in caves. As for budget, they seemed to have dispensed most of their funds in helping the poor.

Headcounts hardly appear after the Day of Pentecost. We notice a couple of large numbers in Acts 2:41 and 4:4. Later on, Acts 19:7 says “about twelve men” in Ephesus were filled with the Holy Spirit under Paul’s ministry. Beyond that, we know nothing. In 1 Corinthians 1:14–16, Paul can’t even remember whom he baptized, let alone the total count.

How large was the attendance in the Antioch church? Berea? Philippi? Rome? We have no idea.

How large was the congregation at Philadelphia, one of the seven churches addressed in the book of Revelation? Apparently, not very big. The Lord says, “I know that you have little strength.” Yet he proceeds to give them a glowing review (Rev. 3:7–13).

By contrast, how large was the congregation at Laodicea? One can get a hint from the fact that the church was “rich and in need of nothing.” For all we know, it may have drawn 7,000 on a Sunday. Their bills were certainly paid—yet they received a scathing spiritual rebuke.

Nowhere in the epistles do we find Paul saying, “I hear your attendance was down last quarter—what’s the problem? What are you going to do about it?”

This leads me to say that no church, including the one I pastor, should be measured by its attendance. Although I am thankful for the crowds of people who come to the Brooklyn Tabernacle every week, that is not the sign of God’s grace.

BEYOND POPULARITY

THEN WHAT KIND OF spiritual things do matter in a book-of-Acts church? The apostles’ prayer in Acts 4 provides our next benchmark: “Enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness” (v.29). What the disciples wanted was not numbers but an essential quality that would keep them being the church God intended.

Boldness can only be imparted by the Holy Spirit. There is no such thing as “taught boldness.” You cannot get it through a seminar. Second Timothy 1:7 says, “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”

New Testament preachers were boldly confrontational, trusting that the Holy Spirit would produce the conviction necessary for conversion. They were not afraid.

Listen to Peter on the Day of Pentecost: “You, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23). This was the last thing the crowd wanted to hear. If David Letterman had a Top Ten list of things not to say to a Jewish audience, number one would be “Guess what—with your own hands you just killed the Messiah, the one Israel has been expecting for centuries.”

But Peter’s boldness did not drive the people away. Instead, it stabbed their consciences. By the end of the day a huge group had repented of their sin and been converted.

In the next chapter, Peter was just as straightforward with the crowd that gathered after the healing of the cripple: “You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the author of life…. Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:14–15, 19).

When Paul preached in Ephesus some years later, his confrontation with the pagan idolatry was so direct that a riot broke out. “They were furious and began shouting: ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’ Soon the whole city was in an uproar” (Acts 19:28 – 29). This doesn’t sound very market-sensitive or user-friendly to me.

A strong church was established nonetheless. And when Paul bade them farewell, he could say, “I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God…. Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears” (Acts 20:27, 31). Notice: “the whole will of God … I never stopped warning you.” This was at the heart of apostolic ministry.

The apostles realized that without a bold, aggressive attitude in proclaiming God’s Word, they would not build the church Jesus intended. Any church in any city of the world must come to the same conclusion.

The apostles weren’t trying to finesse people. Their communication was not supposed to be “cool” or soothing. They aimed for a piercing of the heart, for conviction of sin. They had not the faintest intention of asking, “What do people want to hear? How can we draw more people to church on Sunday?” That was the last thing in their minds. Such an approach would have been foreign to the whole New Testament.

Instead of trying to bring men and women to Christ in the biblical way, we are consumed with the unbiblical concept of “church growth.” The Bible does not say we should aim at numbers but rather urges us faithfully to proclaim God’s message in the boldness of the Holy Spirit. This will build God’s church God’s way.

Unfortunately, some churches now continually monitor how pleased people are with the services and ask what else they would like. One denominational specialist told a reporter, “We need to learn how to surf with changes.”¹

We have no permission whatsoever to adjust the message of the gospel. Whether it seems popular or not, whether it is “hip” to the times, we must faithfully and boldly proclaim that sin is real but Jesus forgives those who confess.

God nowhere asks anyone to have a large church. He only calls us to do his work, proclaiming his Word to people he loves under the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit to produce results that only he can bring about. The glory then goes to him alone—not to any denomination, local church, local pastor, or church-growth consultant. That is God’s only plan, and anything else is a deviation from the teaching of the New Testament.

God told Ezekiel that if wicked people needed a warning and he failed to deliver it, their blood would be on the prophet’s hands. The same holds true today for ministers of the Word.

Dwight L. Moody was haunted all his life by an occasion when he felt he got too clever in presenting the gospel. Six years before he died he recounted what had happened back in Chicago in the fall of 1871:

I intended to devote six nights to Christ’s life. I had spent four Sunday nights on the subject and had followed him from the manger along through his life to his arrest and trial, and on the fifth Sunday night, October 8, I was preaching to the largest congregation I had ever had in Chicago, quite elated with my success. My text was “What shall I do then with Jesus which is called the Christ?” That night I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. After preaching … with all the power that God had given me, urging Christ upon the people, I closed the sermon and said, “I wish you would take this text home with you and turn it over in your minds during the week, and next Sunday we will come to Calvary and the cross, and we will decide what we will do with Jesus of Nazareth.”

Just at that moment, a fire bell rang nearby. Moody quickly dismissed the meeting and sent the people out of the building. It was the beginning of the Great Chicago Fire, which over the next 27 hours left 300 dead, 90,000 homeless, and a great city in ashes. Obviously, Moody never got to finish his sermon series.

He continued:

I have never seen that congregation since. I have hard work to keep back the tears today…. Twenty-two years have passed away … and I will never meet those people again until I meet them in another world. But I want to tell you one lesson I learned that night, which I have never forgotten, and that is, when I preach to press Christ upon the people then and there, I try to bring them to a decision on the spot. I would rather have [my] right hand cut off than give an audience a week to decide what to do with Jesus.

No wonder the apostle James wrote, “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (4:14). The gospel is too important to be left to tomorrow, or next week, or when the crowd seems friendlier.

Did John Wesley, preaching to hardened miners in the open fields of England in the 1700s, ever say to himself, I had better not tell them they’re sinners; they might leave?

Today we have an anti-authority spirit in America that says, “Nobody can tell me I need to change. Don’t you dare.” Both in the pulpit and in pastoral counseling we have too often given in to this mentality and are afraid to speak the truth about sin. We keep appealing to Paul’s line about becoming “all things to all men” (1 Cor. 9:22), not noticing that in the very next paragraph he says, “Run in such a way as to get the prize” (v. 24). Adapting our style to get a hearing is one thing, but the message can never change without leaving us empty-handed before the Lord.

Do we still believe the truth of Proverbs 28:23, where it says, “He who rebukes a man will in the end gain more favor than he who has a flattering tongue”?

Jesus was confrontational. When Peter told him to avoid the cross, Jesus didn’t reply, “You know, Peter, I’m really trying to understand where you’re coming from. I appreciate how you care about me and don’t want me to get hurt.” Rather, he said to his number-one disciple, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” (Matt. 16:23).

What do we have in mind?

GETTING TO THE POINT

I HAVE FOUND THAT about 90 percent of the time, the problems people describe to me are not their real problems. Therefore the challenge in all preaching and counseling is to get to the bottom-line spiritual issue. A husband says, “She doesn’t understand me.” It is easy to reply, “Yes, that’s too bad. I feel sorry for you.” But what may be really going on is that he’s acting like a brute.

Graciously but firmly, we have to speak the truth in love.

An attractive young couple, whom I will call Michelle and Steve, came forward for prayer at the end of a Sunday service. Both were nicely dressed—he in an expensive suit and $60 silk tie, she in a fashionable dress. I could tell by the moisture in her eyes that something had touched her during the service. By contrast, he seemed to hold back just a step, not looking me in the eye.

“Would you please pray for us?” she asked.

“Certainly,” I said. “What would you like me to pray about?”

“That God will bless our relationship,” she replied.

That line can mean anything, especially in New York City. I felt prompted to ask a few more questions.

“Uh, before I pray, help me with a little background, if you will. How long have you known each other?”

“A couple of years.”

The next question wasn’t exactly polite, but I felt the Spirit nudging me. So, without the slightest change in my voice level or inflection, I said, “Are you living together?”

The shock was instantaneous. Her eyelashes blinked; his head snapped up. We stood there frozen for a second, staring at each other. Finally she answered, “Well, uh … yes, we are.”

I nodded, then said, “Okay, that puts me in sort of a bind. You want me to ask God to bless something that he has already expressed his opinion about. He’s already made it clear in the Bible that living together outside of marriage is wrong. So it looks to me like I’d be wasting everybody’s time to ask his help in this situation, wouldn’t I?”

They just stared at me. I pressed on.

“I tell you what—let’s get on track with God’s plan. Steve, how about you finding another place to live—right now? You say you want God’s best for your relationship. Okay, this is step number one. This will open the door for many other good things.”

I could tell Steve wasn’t thrilled with the idea.

“Do you have family or friends in the city where you could stay tonight?”

No, he couldn’t think of anyone.

“Listen, we’ll get you a place to stay,” I said. “If God is real and you truly want his help in your life, then go his way. Otherwise, do whatever you like! Of course, it will destroy you in the end; you can’t change God’s consequences any more than you can change the law of gravity.”

He mumbled another excuse. I called one of the lay helpers over and requested that Steve be provided with a bed for the night.

Steve and Michelle still weren’t sure. “How about if we stay where we are but just don’t sleep together? That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”

I replied, “If you both profess to be Christians, you have to avoid the obvious physical temptation. Besides, when you walk out of your apartment in the morning, what would a neighbor logically assume? Do this thing right, all the way, okay?”

They finally agreed to the plan.

Some couples in the same situation, I must tell you, have not agreed. They have said things like “Well, we’ll get back to you about that” and walked out. But at least I could rest at night knowing I had told them the truth before God.

I have also received follow-up letters from women saying, “You know, I didn’t like what you said to my boyfriend and me that day. You showed us what we needed to hear from the Bible, but we didn’t want to accept it. Anyway, I thought I should let you know that in time, he left me, just as you said. I was a piece of meat, nothing more. Now I’m alone again, and I wish I would have listened.”

Steve and Michelle’s situation turned out better. He immediately found another place to live. We kept working with them and gave them counseling. God opened their eyes to spiritual realities. Then something wonderful happened. On a Tuesday night, as the prayer meeting was drawing to a close, I said, “Before you all leave, I have a surprise for you tonight. Everybody stand, please.”

The congregation rose … and the organist began the stately octaves of Lohengrin’s “Wedding March.” The rear doors opened and the smiling bride, in a simple street-length dress and holding flowers, moved forward. The people broke into wild applause. Steve, who had been sitting near me on the front row all evening, stood for the ceremony. In front of 1,500 witnesses, they were united in Christ.

Several times during the proceedings, their quiet weeping for joy became so loud it could be heard through my microphone. They managed to say their vows nevertheless. After the recessional I said to the audience, “You know, that couple just recently came to the Lord.” I didn’t go into the unseemly details of their past, but most people could figure it out. They knew full well the grace and power of God to make crooked things straight.

This kind of thing has happened a number of times on Tuesday nights over the years. It is always a wonderful celebration.

PLEASING WHOM

THE STAFF OF THE Brooklyn Tabernacle have taken a bold stand even in complicated cases, as when the couple who are living together have children. To ask the man to move out temporarily but keep on paying the bills is tough. Those who are earnest about repenting, however, have followed through just that way.

I often say to cohabiting couples, “You’re probably wondering, What’s this preacher’s angle? What is he trying to prove? I have no angle other than to please God. As you can see, the church building is already full; we’re not desperate for new members or your contributions in the offering. But we are desperate to please God and not be ashamed when we stand before him someday.”

The apostle Paul expressed his conviction this way in 1 Thessalonians 2:4. “We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts.” God didn’t ask Carol and me to build a big church. He told us to preach the gospel and love people in his name. Some listeners reject the truth while others open up. It has been this way throughout history, but the results are always more dynamic and glorious when we do things God’s way.

Just as the Israelites were warned not to mingle with the Canaanite gods called Baal or Asherah, we must beware a god in our time called Success. Bigger is not better if it comes at the expense of disowning the truth or grieving the Holy Spirit.

Imagine a basketball court with hoops five feet off the ground. The free-throw line is three feet away. I’ve just made 884 free throws in a row.

My wife walks out to watch and says, “What are you doing?”

“I’m playing basketball. See, here’s the ball, and there’s the hoop on a backboard. The lines are all marked and everything.”

Carol would say, “No, the hoop is supposed to be ten feet high, and the line is supposed to be fifteen feet away. That is basketball. What you’re doing is nothing more than a charade.”

We have a lot of markings that look like Christianity these days, but we have drastically revised the parameters. People have lowered the standards in a vain attempt to make churches look more successful than they really are. The sermons have to be uniformly positive, and the services can’t go longer than 60 minutes. Even then, church is inconvenient for some, especially during football season. Showing up at church is such a burden that soon people will be faxing in their worship!

One minister told me recently that two families left for another church because his parking attendants didn’t direct cars out of the lot fast enough. What would these people have done the night in Troas when Paul preached until midnight? (See Acts 20:7.)

Can you imagine someone handing Peter a microphone on Sunday morning and whispering, “Okay, now, you’ve got twenty minutes. We have to get the people out of here promptly because the chariot races start at one o’clock”?

The truth is that “user-friendly” can be a cover-up word for carnality. The same people who want sixty-minute worship services rent two-hour videos and watch NBA and NFL games that run even longer. The issue is not length, but appetite. Why the misplaced desire?

Seriously, what will our children and grandchildren grow up experiencing in church? Extended times of waiting on the Lord will be totally foreign to their experience. There will be no memory bank of seeing people reach out to God. All they will recall are professionally polished, closely timed productions.

One of our soloists recently went to sing in a church and was told in advance, “We want to ask you not to sing any song that mentions the blood of Christ. People feel uncomfortable with that, and our goal here is to be user-friendly.”

If people really don’t appreciate the word blood in the sense of sacrifice, why are we so open to Fourth of July speakers referring to the sacrifice of the brave men and women who fought to defend America? Should we avoid mentioning the blood that was shed for political liberty? If not, how much more should we honor the blood of the Lamb of God, no matter what others think?

The message of the cross will always be foolishness to some, a stumbling block to others. But if our attention is on the market reaction, we move away from the power of the gospel. This fearfulness to talk about the blood of Christ is an overreaction. Worse than that, it borders on heresy, distorting and deflating the power of the Good News.

What has become of standing unashamed for the gospel of Christ? No one is smarter than God. When he says to do his work in his way, we can be assured that he will produce his results for his glory. We don’t need to get “creative” on him. God knows exactly what we need to do and expects us to trust and obey him in childlike simplicity.

God does not ask us to be clever in appealing to those who want a worldly type of wisdom. It is not by might, not by power, not by computers, not by cleverness, but by my Spirit, says the Lord (see Zech. 4:6).

These days we are so programmed that God couldn’t break in if he wanted to. During times of worship in many churches, the schedule of songs and hymns is so rigid that nothing, not even God’s Spirit, can interrupt. The worship leaders have the musical key changes memorized and everything. If God could lead the Israelites for 40 years in the wilderness, can’t he lead us through one meeting, one praise-and-worship time, without a lineup? A basic sign of revival is that the wind is allowed to blow where it will.

We don’t need technicians and church programmers; we need God. He is not looking for smart people, because he’s the smart one. All he wants are people simple enough to trust him.

According to 1 Corinthians 14, if meetings are governed by the Holy Spirit, the result for the visitor will be that “the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!’” (v. 25). This should be our goal. When a visitor comes in, there should be such a mixture of God’s truth and God’s presence that the person’s heart is x-rayed, the futility of his life is exposed, and he crumbles in repentance.

Are we longing for this? Are we praying for this? Are today’s church leaders aiming for this? Are church members encouraging their pastors to act on the Lord’s prompting no matter the cost?

Alexander Whyte, after observing the 1859 awakening in Scotland, made this marvelous statement: “In revival, the congregation does the preaching.” What he meant was that, beyond the presence of preachers, musicians, and other ministries, what speaks to the heart is that God is dwelling in close communion with his people.

THE REAL TEST

AT A MUSIC CONFERENCE where I spoke, a gentleman approached me with tears in his eyes. “We’ve just gotten a new pastor,” he said. “And his instructions to me, as the minister of music, are: ‘Please discontinue “church music.” I want you to look for choral music from Broadway, from the pop scene, for the Sunday meetings.’

“What am I going to do? I want to relate to people the same as he does—but does that mean I can’t honor the Lord’s name in our music, as I always have?”

I told him he had no choice but to go back to his pastor and open his heart. They needed to have a long talk.

There will come a day, Paul says, when all our “work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work” (1 Cor. 3:13). The gold, silver, and precious stones will endure while the wood, hay, and straw will go up in smoke.

Paul doesn’t say that the quantity will be tested. He says nothing about attendance totals. Everything will focus on quality.

Warren Wiersbe made an interesting observation about this passage to the Brooklyn Tabernacle staff. “What’s the difference between these materials, besides the obvious—that one group is fireproof while the other isn’t?

“I think it’s significant that wood, hay, and straw are abundant … right outside your door, or only a few miles away at most. Any forest, any farmer’s field has an abundance of these.

“But if you want gold, silver, and costly stones, you have to dig for them. You have to pursue with great effort. They’re not just lying around everywhere. You have to go deep into the earth.”

To me, these words are profound. Spiritual “construction” that uses wood, hay, and straw comes easy—little work, little seeking, no travail, no birthing. You just slap it up and it will look adequate—for a while. But if you want to build something that will endure on Judgment Day, the work is much more costly.

On that day it won’t matter what your fellow Christians thought of you. It won’t matter what the marketing experts advised. You and I will stand before the One whose eyes are “like fire.” We won’t soften him up by telling him how brilliant our strategy was. We will face his searing gaze.

He will only ask whether we were boldly faithful to his Word.