By Jason Charles on 4/10/2019 (5 years 266 days ago) Theology & Religion
It is often heard that the devil’s greatest trick is convincing the world that he doesn’t exist. I would disagree, and instead advise that the greatest trick the devil has ever pulled is the creation of an institutionalized church.
The Curse of Institutionalization
A newly released Barna Poll suggest that a whopping 64% of pastors are afraid to speak out on social issues such as abortion. Faithwire reporting on these findings quotes the Barna Research saying,
“The pressure for leaders, and especially faith leaders, to satisfy everyone on all sides and to avoid offense is very real today, especially in the digital era,” said Roxanne Stone, editor-in-chief of Barna. “The public nature of social media only increases the stakes.”
The majority of the push and pull pastors feel is coming from inside the congregations they lead.
Survey: Americans Concerned About Country’s Moral Crisis, But Still Turning Away from God
Most of the pastors polled — 64 percent — said they feel limited by their own church members in their capacity to speak out on social and moral topics. By contrast, 69 percent feel pressured to address those same issues from the pulpit.
Michael Howard, senior pastor of Seaford Baptist Church in Virginia, explained in an interview with Faithwire that pastors — like everyone else — wrestle with the desire for acceptance.
“I think a lot of guys probably have thought, ‘I don’t wanna hurt my approval rating,’” he said. “It’s the same reason presidents don’t do everything they said they were gonna do.”(Faithwire)
So, everybody in the world gets to grand-stand and take sides on social issues, but not pastors? Politicians wallow in divisive social issues as a means to rally voting blocks, the fake news media vomits social issues incessantly, social media is an all-out war-zone over these charged issues, and now the historically neutral mega-corporations saturate themselves in SJW causes; but mind you Pastors can’t speak without fear. What a bunch of horse manure.
These American pastors, who Barna research suggest are fearful of speaking on pertinent issues are perhaps the biggest cowards in the known world when everybody else is doing it but they can’t find the spine to speak out to the same degree. Laughably, it seems a 91-year-old grandmother on Facebook has more courage to tackle issues like abortion, the sodomite mafia, the Zionists wars of aggression, constitutional government, etc, than 64% of American pastors.
Let’s get real, it has nothing to do with the pressures placed on them externally, the research plainly suggested internal congregational and organizational pressures for this fear. As quoted above, “Michael Howard, senior pastor of Seaford Baptist Church in Virginia, explained …“I think a lot of guys probably have thought, ‘I don’t wanna hurt my approval rating,’”
It all boils down to popularity for the average pastor who is unwilling to rock the boat on social issues any given Sunday. They instinctively know that their popularity is tied to the flow of money Sunday after Sunday, a telling fact which betrays their true loyalties. Jesus said you can’t have two masters,
“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24
It becomes apparent that the devil’s trick of institutionalizing the church is simply a clever tactic used to enslave the church to worldly pursuits.
Through the implementation of expensive bureaucratic infrastructure, tax designations, and operational costs that demand heavy influxes of cash to maintain, churches have become slaves to mammon, fighting over congregational scrapes like street performing monkeys.
The more families and employees who become reliant on the church’s financial success, the less likely a pastor will speak-out on unpopular Biblical topics. It literally is a math equation, the larger a church becomes the less Truth is spoken at the pulpit.
Historical Contrast
I truly believe that the church was never intended to have organizational structures like we see now. The modern church can be best described as a monetized cult-of-personality, with just enough semblance of Christianity to fool the idiots in the pews to pull their wallets out after the sappy worship music starts playing.
Every one of the thousands of mega-churches in the U.S. are built around the on-stage charisma of their worship leaders and lead pastors. Without their well-choreographed and entertaining stage performances these churches would never be able to draw the crowds necessary to sustain the overhead of multimillion-dollar facilities and hundreds of employees. In fact, the average megachurch, which is classified as 2000+ weekly attendance pulls in an average of $6.5 million annually, while the largest churches in the world pull in $100’s of millions of dollars annually.
Could you imagine the Apostle Peter consulting with his board and PR advisors before tweeting a verse of scripture or truth in an effort to avoid confrontation? Of, course you can’t, he was preaching to the men that wished him jailed and dead in Acts 4 with total disregard to his own personal welfare.
Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel, If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole; Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. Acts 4:8-10
How about Stephen? He literally was stoned to death while preaching a sermon against the Jews killing their Messiah.
Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, Acts 7:51-55
Today try to get a preacher to condemn Israel like Stephen and Peter did, that preacher would rather publicly stone himself rather than attempt to preach the truth about ancient and modern Israel to a crowd of rabid, Trump-loving Christian Zionists today; which sadly make up the vast majority of main-stream churches.
The disconnect between today’s churches and the 1st century church recorded in Acts is appalling to say the least. The biggest difference is the corporatization of the church leadership and function.
Every historical instance of churches that have become incorporated into government sanctioned entities, becomes subservient, weak, and corrupted by the love of money. To the point of promulgating nothing but error, and false-doctrine.
Starting with the Pharisees and Herods Temple itself, into the church age with the advent of the mass murdering catholic church during the dark ages, the church under Hitler’s Germany, the modern state-run churches in China which are currently being torn apart, and well into the modern age with the 501c3 corporatization of the American church. Every one of these examples serve as a historical warning to the evils of entangling the church with the state at any level, and operating the church like a business.
The devil has reduced the effectiveness of the church through this tactic of institutionalization, this is a fact so obvious we don’t need a Barna study to paint us the reality, we can simply look at the moral void left in society due to the absence of hard Truth filled preaching.
Conclusion
What is most disturbing about these pastors who refuse to speak out is the fact that they simply don’t fear God. If they truly feared God, nothing in the world could dissuade them from condemning evil and unlawfulness in the same way God called His servants and prophets throughout scripture. All of which spoke Truth to power bar none.
We have the world we live in because the church has lost both its salt and light. Salt being the hard Truth's of scripture that persevers the moral character of society and the light being that of Jesus Christ that brings hope and conviction to the hearts of men through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Scripture says both Stephen and Peter were "Filled" with the Holy Spirit when they condemend the pharisees to their faces. Could the reason why so many pastors are scared to speak out is because they are not "Filled" with the Holy Spirit? It seems they are filled with ambition, pride, ego, charisma, love of money, success, growth goals, etc, everything other than the Holy Spirit today.
We have the America we have because of the pastors we have. The devil will continue to crush the American church into Truthless submission as result of the subservient pastors who insist on being slaves to the institutionalized church.
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