I was struck by a comment from Rick Warren. He was apparently being interviewed on ABC, repeating some nonsense about his principled objection to "same sex marriage". He was asked about the prospect of his church adapting its views, as wider culture changes. His response:
WARREN: Actually, history shows that when the church accommodates culture, it weakens it. This is why there is a very weak church in Europe today. It’s almost non-existent in many areas.
Now, that is hard to defend - and shows a staggering lack of self-awareness. But the striking sentence is the middle one. The implication is that strength is good and weakness is bad. But I'm just not sure that that is a Kingdom principle. Of course, context is all-important. But in general, I'm not sure that the message of Christ is about a need to be strong, powerful, or influential. St. Paul was assured that God's strength was made perfect in his weakness; he said that God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
All this is a little reminiscent of the view of a certain man from Seattle who bemoaned Great Britain's lack of famous bible teachers.
Oh the irony. If we have a business model of church, with franchises spread around the country (or the world), then fame, strength, and influence will be all-important. But might there not be a chance, just a little one, that this is the embrace of wider culture, precisely the thing Warren complains about? The Kingdom is different from that. It's summed up by a man at the end of himself, hung on a cross.
3 comments:
1 Cor 1:25 "for the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom and the weaknesses of God is stronger than man's strength".
I think the church is supposed to be strong - strong in power and grace as it demonstrates God's character, not strong with regard to wealth, size, political influence, etc.
I haven't heard Ricky Warren's comments in full but it's ludicrous to suggest that cultural change weakens the church or that culture is a threat to the church. The church has changed culturally a great deal through the centuries and is active within a huge variety of cultures across the world. The Bible shows us plenty of ways in which God's people have positively embraced cultural change, most notably perhaps the issue of clean and unclean foods.
To misquote Martin Luther King Jr. "even the culture you hate most has some good in it".
Hi @Mel,
Yes, I think you're right. "Strong" could mean a lot of things.
There are a few groups that have tried to resist cultural change - the Amish spring to mind - but I don't really see Rick Warren as aligned with them. So I don't think I really know what he can mean.
Just read a transcript of the interview Ricky Warren gave - he completely dodged a question about whether the church "needs to adjust its position on same sex marriage in the same way that churches have throughout the years adjusted their positions. For instance, on divorce. Divorce used to be, you know, if you got divorced, you were persona non grata." Personally, I think that's a great question - but Warren just goes on about not being willing to change his mind because he serves a higher power and knows what the Bible says. It takes a lot of strength to accept that you might be wrong and that you don't know it all!
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