"Always remember, when somebody comes up with something new,
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God gave the first Christians." -- Dr. Matthew McMahon, aPuritansMind.com

 

23 January, 2007   comments: (0) Today's Pragmatism   Churching an Entertainment Culture - Part 3 In the previous installments we analyzed the scriptural and historical basis for Perry Noble's claims of the prerogative to use entertainment in a church service and we found them wanting. In this installment we will examine the statistical numbers he cites, some of his succeeding questions and the answers he provides in the light of Scripture and the minds God has endowed us with. We will pay particular attention to his own analysis of the numerical trends within American Christianity. Perry operates from a worldview or viewpoint that entertainment is necessary to maintain church attendance and we can see this is the filter that he uses to evaluate the numerical data. This post is part 3 in a special series by guest contributor Scott Oliver. I've invited Scott to write an analysis of the views expressed by innovative church pastor and conference speaker Perry Noble. Scott is a fellow "refugee" of a seeker centered church, and a long time reader of Old Truth. He has immediate family members who serve as a seminary professor and a pastor. Scott's article continues from part 2 . . . Perry commits the same mistake that the evolutionist makes in that he starts with a theory and then filters all the data, if it proves his point it is accepted, if it disproves his point it is discarded. From his perspective his thesis of "entertainment is necessary" must be correct therefore any data that disproves his theory must be ignored, wrong, incorrect, etc. Perry states the following in his post: Now...I am a firm believer that numbers do not lie...and the numbers say that over 90% of the churches in America are either stagnant OR declining. (I actually read in one report that an average of six churches per day in America are closing their doors!!!) Here is where we can all agree somewhat with the numbers. Perry does not provide the actual numbers and source of his data so I will give two sources. The first source is George Barna who does much of the polling data for the Mega Church and Seeker Sensitive proponents. His data for the percentage of adults nationwide who have attended a church service in the past seven days not including a special event such as a wedding or a funeral is as follows: 2006-47% 2004-43% 2002-43% 2001-42% 2000-40% 1997-43% 1996-37% 1992-47% 1991-49%. These statistics roughly match the Gallup reported numbers for church attendance which reflect roughly 40% of the populace is church goers. It is easy to see that church attendance has been essentially flat for the past ten years and the Gallup poll data has it flat for at least the past 30 years. These numbers are misleading because they are the numbers that people report to pollsters. As we all know what people report they do and what they actually do are often two different things. The church attendance numbers are looked at and reported more extensively in a recent report in Christianity Today from Outreach magazine in a report titled 'American church in crisis'. They look beyond what people report their church attendance is to the actual attendance based on churches attendance rolls. They find church attendance is more in the 20% range and dropping. From the report they state the following: "[Their] findings reveal that the actual rate of church attendance from head counts is less than half of the 40% the pollsters report. Numbers from actual counts of people in Orthodox Christian churches (Catholic, mainline and evangelical) show that in 2004, 17.7% of the population attended a Christian church on any given weekend." "In 1990, 20.4% of the population attended an Orthodox Christian church on any given weekend. In 2000, that percentage dropped to 18.7% and to 17.7% by 2004. Olson explains that while church attendance numbers have stayed about the same from 1990 to 2004, the U.S. population has grown by 18.1%--more than 48 million people. "So even though the number of attendees is the same, our churches are not keeping up with population growth," he says." We have now established that at best the number of church attendees have remained flat and at worst church attendance are on a precipitous decline. But what is the status of the quantity of churches? The report states the following: Between 2000 and 2004, the net gain (the number of new churches minus the closed churches) in the number of evangelical churches was 5,452, but mainline and Catholic churches closed more than they started for a net loss of 2,200, leaving an overall net gain of 3,252 for all Orthodox Christian churches. "In this decade, approximately 3,000 churches closed every year; while more churches were started, only 3,800 survived," Olson explains. In the 21st century, the net gain in churches has amounted to only 800 each year. I verified these numbers with the Association of Religious Data Archives (ARDA) and the statistics essentially agree. The total number of churches has been increasing over successive decades at an ever decreasing rate for at least the past 30 years. Their numbers are slightly different but the trend is the same. So we have now established the validity of Perry's numbers but what about his ensuing questions and conclusions. This is where we have a divergence and Perry has not revealed the entire finding of the statistics because they would be damaging to his overall thesis of "entertainment is necessary" to maintain church attendance. Here is what Perry has to say on the obviously distressing numbers: So here is another question to add to that...WHY IS CHURCH ATTENDANCE DECREASING? Is it because God just isn't that big anymore? Nope! Or maybe it has to do with the Bible–does the Bible lack the power to bring practical teaching and transformation? I would say a big fat NO to this question as well! Then what is it? Why are churches shutting down when there are more people in this country than EVER before? MAYBE it is because people find absolutely NO value in going to church! MAYBE there is nothing in the church that seems to hold their attention! MAYBE church just ISN'T GOOD anymore. And people–you can SCREAM at people for embracing this mindset–but the people who are embracing it ARE LOST!!! AND...if we are not willing to do what it takes to reach them then they are going to go to HELL!!! This means that WHEN they walk in the doors of our church that there SHOULD be something there that catches their attention...there had better be...or they are not coming back. First, I would be remiss not to point out a major theological contradiction in Perry's statements above. He first affirms the Omnipresence of God and the power of the Bible, God's Word, but later goes on to state that they are not sufficient, we need to add "something to catch" a church goers "attention". It is important to note that he picks Omnipresence but not any of the other attributes of God to buttress his point. This is because the other attributes of God would be detrimental to his own theology such as God's Immutability, Sovereignty, Righteousness, or Omnipotence. In the CGM/SS (Seeker Sensitive) theology we have to do something to augment the methods God has given us to worship Him from Scripture and to attract the lost. From their point of view if we are doing it for the lost then that trumps Biblical directives and principles. (We also see this today in secular politics that the arguments or methods cannot be questioned or are immediately nullified if the motives are pure. e.g. for the children, environment, etc) Previously we have shown the lack of Biblical precedence for adding entertainment but it would be prudent now to look at 1 Sam 13:6-14 where we read Saul violated the proscribed means of worship and sacrifice. His immediate concern was that he would lose his army and eventually the ensuing battles. So he opted to offer the sacrifice in the place of God's appointed one Samuel. One could say Saul's motive was pure; he only was trying to save his troops and the battle for God. But God through Samuel chastised Saul for his disobedience. The end result was he was punished for it for the rest of his life. From Genesis to Revelation we see that obedience to the Triune God is paramount. Therefore we can see from Scripture that we better be sure that we understand the directives and principles from Scripture or there will be eventual consequences. In the New Testament we are instructed that the means to communicate God's word and salvation is through the foolishness of preaching (1 Cor 1:18) and teaching (Matt 28:19-20). From Perry's statements we can see that for a CGM/SS pastor the power of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit or the Scripture is not enough to maintain church attendance and provide the means to convert the lost through His ordained means but we have to add entertainment. I must note that there are even deeper theological problems in what he is saying here and throughout his post. I will delve into the entire CGM/SS faulty theology at another time because it is necessary for us to continue to focus on his faulty numerical analysis and conclusions. Second, because of Perry Noble's predisposition to using entertainment in church he does not even make a pretense at objectively looking at the numbers and other possible conclusions that they may indicate. There are other conclusions that can be made from the available data that he has chosen not to consider or reveal to his audience (or himself). The evangelical community has been under pressure for its entire existence and particularly the past 30 years to modify church services to include all kinds of entertainment and gimmickry to grow and maintain audiences even though there is no scriptural support for it. Bill Hybels established Willow Creek in 1975 and introduced the concept of polling the general area to find out what "un-churched Harry and Sally" would like in their church service. Willow Creek's latest gimmick for Christmas services was to have Cirque de Soleil type of act during the service. In 1980 Rick Warren started Saddleback utilizing some of the methods of Bill Hybels while mixing in some of the theology of Robert Schuller. All one needs to do is peruse the list of various services and events at Saddleback to see the entertainment component of their services and events. At present it is difficult if not impossible to go to a major metropolitan area that does not have a large or mega church within it that does not subscribe to their methods. Now these churches cannot be accused of not providing entertainment in their services by any stretch of the imagination. These larger churches by virtue of their size have an effect on the perception of the unbelieving general populace. Due to their level of novelty and lack of threat to the beliefs of the world they gain the majority of press. This in turn also puts pressure on smaller churches to modify their services to be "hip" or "with it". The impression to the world is that a Christian church is nothing more than entertainment venue that tries to meld some religious content into it. Now why would there be any attraction for the pagan world to enter a faux entertainment venue when they can go to real pagan event? There is none. Could it be that the interjecting of entertainment into the church services over the last thirty years is what is causing the reduction in church attendance? Now that is a question that Perry and the CGM/SS proponents do not want to evaluate. There seems to be at least some correlation between the increase in entertainment in church and the decrease in attendance, though it is difficult to prove causation in the spiritual arena (something the CGM/SS crowd does not want to admit). One would expect if Perry's thesis was correct we would be seeing an explosion in church growth and attendance because of all the entertainment that is available in churches today. But we have not, exactly the opposite has happened. It is just as possible, we would say certain, that God is not blessing the churches in America with real growth and revival because they are no longer obedient to Him. They feel that He needs help and they are all too willing to provide innovative and relevant worldly means and entertainment. To illustrate the delusional aspect of this we need to summarize Perry's and the SS/SGM position which is; we are to use more of a means that God has not ordained, that the results so far have been a decrease in the quantity of churches and overall attendance. Furthermore if we do not see adequate results then we are to increase the quality and amount of entertainment which has not been producing the desired results so that then we will have church growth. Some might say that this position and course of action is more than delusional but suicidal. Continue reading in part 4 . . . Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.602   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism