What's Wrong with "User
Friendly?"
by: John Mac
Recently,
the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary was published.
The reprint included 10,000 new words– words that will bring us all up to
date. Words like "phat" (excellent),
"dead presidents" (paper currency), and "McJob"
(low paying, dead-end job) are among the entries that will finally help us
communicate with our teenagers.
How did
those words make it into the updated dictionary? There is one criterion:
usage. A word qualifies for the new edition based on how widespread its
usage has become. While I can't imagine how phat,
McJob, and dead presidents will find a place in
America's pulpits (e.g., The love of dead presidents is the root of all kinds
of evil?), there is one phrase borrowed from the computer industry that has
spread into mainstream usage in the church– it's impact has been monumental.
"User-friendly"
was first used to describe software and hardware that is easy for the novice to
operate. Applied to the church, it describes churches that offer a
decidedly benign and non-challenging ministry model. In practice, it has become
an excuse for importing worldly amusements into the church in an attempt to
attract non-Christian "seekers" or the "unchurched"
by appealing to their fleshly interests. The obvious fallout of this
preoccupation with the unbelievers is a corresponding neglect of true believers
and their spiritual needs.
If you
want to know how user-friendly a church has become, the emphasis, or
de-emphasis, on biblical preaching is the yardstick. A church that buys
into the new paradigm sidelines provocative and convicting sermons for music,
skits, or videos– less confrontational mediums for conveying the message.
Even when there is a sermon, it is frequently psychological and motivational
rather than biblical. Above all, entertainment value and
user-friendliness are paramount.
I once
read through a stack of newspaper and magazine articles that highlight a common
thread in the user-friendly phenomenon. These observations from newspaper
clippings describe the preaching in user-friendly churches:
•
"There is no fire and brimstone here... Just practical,
witty messages."
•
"Services at [the church featured in the article] have an informal
feeling. You won't hear people threatened with hell or referred to as sinners.
The goal is to make them feel welcome, not drive them away."
• "As with all clergymen [this pastor's] answer is God– but
he slips Him in at the end, and even then doesn't get heavy. No ranting, no raving. No
fire, no brimstone. He doesn't even use the H-word. Call it Light
Gospel. It has the same salvation as the Old
•
"The sermons are relevant, upbeat, and best of all, short. You won't
hear a lot of preaching about sin and damnation, and hell fire. Preaching
here doesn't sound like preaching. It is sophisticated, urbane, and
friendly talk. It breaks all the stereotypes."
•
"[The pastor] is preaching a very upbeat message...It's a salvationist message, but the idea is not so much being
saved from the fires of hell. Rather, it's being saved from meaninglessness and
aimlessness in this life. It's more of a soft-sell."
So the
new rules may be summed like this: Be clever, informal, positive, brief,
friendly, and never, never use the H-word.
The
pastors and leaders in the church-growth movement certainly wouldn't portray
their own ministries in that way. In fact, they would probably laud their
success in drawing people into the church without compromising the
message. But they fail to understand that by decentralizing the Scripture
and avoiding hard truths, they are compromising. "For whoever is
ashamed of Me and My words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes
in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels" (Luke
9:26, emphasis added). If the design is to make the seeker comfortable,
isn't that rather incompatible with the Bible's own emphasis on sin, judgment,
hell, and several other important topics?
The
gospel message is a confrontational message. When you remove the confrontation–or
soften, downplay, or bring it in through the back door– you have compromised
the message. The modern pulpit is weak, not for a lack of witty messages,
but because men fear to speak the hard truths of God's Word powerfully and with
conviction.
The
church is certainly not suffering from an overabundance of forthright
preachers; rather, it seems glutted with men pleasers (cf. Gal.
When a
sinner wanders into the church and sits through skits, mimes, interpretive
dances, and the like, and yet never hears a clear, convicting message about his
dangerous and tenuous spiritual situation– that he is a depraved sinner headed
for an eternal fire because he is a daily offense to a holy God– how can that
be called successful? You could achieve the same level of success by
sending a cancer patient to receive treatment from a group of children playing
doctor. A sinner must understand the imminent danger he is in if he is
ever to look to the Savior.
C. H.
Spurgeon, facing a similar mindset in his day, once said:
'I fear
there are some who preach with the view of amusing men, and as long as people
can be gathered in crowds, and their ears can be tickled, and they can retire
pleased with what they have heard, the orator is content, and folds his hands,
and goes back self-satisfied. But Paul did not lay himself out to please
the public and collect the crowd. If he did not save them he felt that it
was of no avail to interest them. Unless the truth had pierced their
hearts, affected their lives, and made new men of them, Paul would have gone
home crying, "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed?"...
Now observe,
brethren, if I, or you, or any of us, or all of us, shall have spent our lives
merely in amusing men, or educating men, or moralizing men, when we shall come
to give our account at the last great day we shall be in a very sorry
condition, and we shall have but a very sorry record to render; for of what
avail will it be to a man to be educated when he comes to be damned? Of
what service will it be to him to have been amused when the trumpet sounds, and
heaven and earth are shaking, and the pit opens wide her jaws of fire and
swallows up the soul unsaved? Of what avail even to have moralized a man
if still he is on the left hand of the judge, and if still, "Depart, ye
cursed," shall be his portion?'" ["Soul Saving
Our One Business," The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 25 (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1879), 674-76.]
That is
precisely my concern about today’s pragmatic church-growth trend. The strategy
focuses on attracting and keeping the unchurched.
For what? To entertain them?
To get them to attend church meetings regularly?
Merely "churching" the unchurched
accomplishes nothing of eternal value. That is where their strategy seems to
end.
What's
worse is when seeker-focused churches baptize the masses with their
watered-down gospel, assuring them that positive decisions, feelings, or
affirmations about Christ equal genuine conversion. There are now multitudes
who are not authentic Christians identifying with the church. The church is
literally invaded with the world's values, the world's interests, and the
world's citizens. It isn't an invasion prompted by overt hostility;
people are simply responding to a survey that came in the mail.
Ironically, Satan isn't sowing the tares; church leaders are.
As you
set your strategy for church ministry, you dare not overlook the primary means
of church growth: the straightforward, Christ-centered proclamation of the
unadulterated Word of God. If you trade the Word for amusements or
gimmicks, you will not only find that you have no effective means to reach
people with the truth of Christ, but you will find yourself working against the
Lord Himself.
Adapted from Ashamed of the Gospel:
When the Church Becomes Like the World
© 1993 by John Mac
All rights reserved.