Does The Gospel Really Have Any Power?

I don’t think it does. I think it may once have had power, but largely it’s fizzling out.

I think church growth experts out there recognize this. Simply sharing, spreading, teaching, exploring, reviewing, singing, articulating, living out the Gospel is largely ineffective. It is not enough to draw in droves of new people, and it is not enough to keep existing people from moving on.

That’s because the Gospel holds no real power—unless it is met with faith.

Without faith, the Gospel is powerless. It is just a theory among other theories to explain the human condition. Not only this, but it is a very distasteful theory. It describes the human condition as literally on a road to hell itself, and that we are all lost sinners. And it only offers one way out–a conversion that ends in utter selflessness where God gets His way, not me. More than this, the necessary, prescribed conversion is specific with regards to Whom you must turn to and what you must turn from.

Make no mistake that indeed  turning to Him requires turning away from everything else. Syncretism is not allowed. You cannot serve two masters. Sin is clearly spelled out, as is the way of holiness. He wants all of me.

Without faith, this is too demanding for the masses. It is too intolerant of other people’s opinions. It is not relevant within today’s sensibilities.

In other words, church leaders are recognizing Jesus was right all along—we have lost our first love. It has grown cold. We are lukewarm at best. Indeed, while the Gospel is becoming distasteful to us, Jesus says that we are becoming distasteful to His own mouth.

We need to be entertained. God forbid if we didn’t have a drama–or a video clip–or a funny joke slipped in during the sermon. And if the pastor doesn’t come across as hip, or if the worship team doesn’t look attractive enough, or if the music doesn’t pump me up, or if the service doesn’t move along fast enough, or if the…well, I could go on.

Let’s face it–most people don’t really understand the Gospel. If we did, we would be repenting every time we heard it. We would be more and more in awe of God the more we unpacked it. We would love God more deeply the more we embraced it.

We would want to reflect more and more on what it means for God to become one of us, die for us, rise from the dead (discovering the New Testament). We would want to dig deeper into how that ties in to what God had been doing for thousands of years before He came–the context of it all (discovering the Old Testament). And we would be eager to discover what He is doing today through those who receive with faith His free gift (discovering the Holy Spirit). Above all else, we would cherish, protect, and nourish our relationship with God.

But how many people out there really have such faith? Savvy church leaders eager to grow an appealing church know there are very few, and therefore recognize that their efforts need to be focused on appealing to the masses if they wish to be successful in their endeavors. What this really means is us church leaders are losing faith in the Gospel.

The tragedy of this all is that people are very much like sheep. We need leaders who have faith in the Gospel in order for us to have faith. We need spiritual fathers. Leaders need to be ok knowing that the multitudes out there may never be drawn to the Gospel–but that’s what faith is all about…taking a risk for God.

I am convinced that more can be done with 12 guys who won’t leave Jesus’ side, rather than trying to woo the masses–if we are willing to take that risk. I am convinced that if leaders would risk investing the bulk of their time and energy in those few, we will see the power of the Gospel in our church like we’ve never seen before.

Maybe the Gospel has lost its power within the multitudes, because the multitudes won’t put faith in it when they see we’ve given up on it for something that we hope works better? Perhaps they won’t believe it as long as they can’t see it in us anymore. Yes, yes, I know that faith is believing without seeing–but I think the greater responsibility to have faith like that rests in us leaders. If we aren’t stepping out, why should they? We need to step out first. That’s what makes us leaders; not the position we hold.