Unfashionable, Three

Back to the matter of the church being a mimic to the world----back to the point relative to Paul's evangelistic methodology and missionary strategy: Our greatest downfall in making attempts to relate to the world happens while having well-meant intentions and sincere applications of practice, but lowering the bar of exacting discipleship.

Exacting discipleship is about being torn away from self, getting rid of self. First and foremost it is to tear self away from self in that we're to remember that we stand before our holy God.

For some examples with respect to public worship,

1. When we lower the bar about dress and clothing in worship and we say casual dress is OK;

2. When we lower the bar about suitable propriety in worship of the body's posture of standing, sitting or kneeling, and we say bar stools, lawn chairs and coffee bars are OK;

3. When we lower the bar on the primary means of the physical ear being what God over and over again addresses as the priority entry-gate into man for gaining His people's attention; and so we lower the bar and say it is OK to start making the physical eye disproportionately more important than the ear, so we have mini-dramas and skits, dialogs for sermons, and the like, and such things are OK.

In these cases, we lower the bar and right away, almost automatically, surrender our witness to the world. This is the primary danger of lowering the bar in the name of relating to the culture. The worldly culture already has her dress, posture and eye-gate interests. Why would the church want to mimic the world on like matters? When we do, we surrender God's moral high ground.

G. Mark Sumpter