Do you want a good, loving church community? Are you a leader who is frustrated and perplexed at why it's so hard to motivate people to live for Christ?
The solution can be found in a honest, and strong grip on the gospel and it's contextual truths.
The gospel is called a light that shines in darkness, the word itself means news that brings blessing.
Therefore, pastors, leaders must not compromise it's contextual truths, that all natural men are slaves of sin, living in darkness, with no hope of digging ourselves out of the pit.
Only when this truth is grasped, and declared without compromise will the gospel be any good. Because only the sick needs a physician. Self righteous people always reject the gospel.
The difficult task in sharing the gospel is that this truth offends people, so we are tempted to compromise. Compromise produced massive damage in churches, men came up with many unbiblical, false methods to "convert" people, then discipleship is difficult because church members are still living in darkness, full of hatred for God and his commandments, no wonder nobody wants to follow Jesus.
Some examples include: redefining the church's mission into something that excludes the above truths from being declared, presumpsiously declaring people to be saved, an all inclusive mentality that blurrs the line between believer and non believer and true and false chrstians, emotional experiences passed off as spiritual and a right relationship with God with no regard to whether the words which produced such emotions are true or not, mysticism without understanding what the bible says about weighty matters.
Secondly, the gospel demands a response, the good and proper response to receive the gospel is repentance and faith. Again, due to a lack of understanding of repentance and fear of offense, repentance is hardly talked about in detail. (Faith is because it's not offensive).
But men cannot separate what God has put together without doing damage. A lack of understanding of true repentance makes it difficult for pastors to care for the souls of the congregation, it makes it difficult for people to examine their own lives so they can have assurance of salvation. If only faith is talked about and taught in churches then we have a man with only one leg, he cannot stand.
When talking about repentance, many may think it is contrary to being saved by grace, because it sounds like works, but this is not true because repentance is not the same as moral reformation and making myself better.
True repentance is rooted in sorrow at the realization that I have sinned against God, and a desire to turn away from sin and towards God. It is different from moral reform, or making comittments to better oneself. The later can come from a trust in myself and lead people further into their depraved, sin nature to find a cure, but the former always leads to trust Christ who is external, out side of men, to find righteousness and justification from the sins we've committed.
True repentance is also a lifelong journey, because even though Christians are righteous and becoming better as time goes by, the fact that we have sin is true until the day we die. 1 John 1 says that if we say we have no sin, then we lie, and declare God a liar. (John uses we so he is included too).
True repentance might start in shame, guilt, and sorrow, but it does not leave you in shame because heaven rejoices over 1 sinner who repents, a good motivation for repentance is hope to obtain joy from God.
True repentance brings a person new relationship with sin and God - the sins we loved we hate and wish to be rid of, the God we hated and who's commands we despised we now love and wants to obey
True repentance leads to a degree of changed behavior - this is different in each person, it's wrong to set up how one person's behavior changes as the standard everyone should follow, because that doesn't address the heart.
Therefore, those who responds to the gospel in repentance and faith can be discipled. When majority of the church members are like this, a healthy church is formed.
I hope this helps and may God bless you and give you comfort in realizing these issues the church is struggling with, and also encouragement and comfort knowing that the solution is a simple grasp of the gospel. Also we need courage to not compromise, and love to not be cruel in our endeavor to stand for the truth. God help us all.
