TCW Short Take #5 - Week of

Here's what the modern evangelical church is known for. It's known for being, above all, attractional. How can we attract the outside world? What kind of growth strategies do we have? How can we be friendly to those, quote-unquote, seeking from the outside? How can we make our music relevant? How can our messages meet felt needs of people in their marriage or parenting or their problems? Or how can we have programs that meet every need of a family so everyone can go to their own place when they go to a church?

How can we be like the world to attract the world? Because ultimately we want to, quote, share the gospel with them. That's the justification for the whole attractional method, that we want to share the gospel with them so we have to become more like them. Well, there is a big warning for this, is that when the church has done this, they've compromised with the world, they've become more like the world, the sin of the world has become involved in the church.

Think about the error of Balaam, the compromise with the world. This is really the DNA of the modern evangelical movement. It's a non-separatistic of the world philosophy, that we don't want to be separate from the world, and we shouldn't be totally separate from the world, but we should be separated from worldliness and ungodliness. But that's not the way the modern evangelical movement sees it. We need to be close to the world, and we can partake in the things of the world, because we need to be attractional to the world to want them to come to us. We hope you gained from this short take of the Christian Worldview radio program. To hear the full program and further connect with this ministry, go to thechristianworldview.org. I'm David Wheaton.