Casting Crowns Gives a Message to the Church
I was recently listening to Start Right Here by Casting Crowns, which couldn’t have a more timely message for the Church today. Check out the first few lines:
“We want our coffee in the lobby; We watch our worship on the screen;
We got a rockstar preacher, who won’t wake us from our dreams.
We want our blessings in our pockets; We keep our missions overseas;
But for the hurting in our cities, would we even cross the street?”
Convicting, isn’t it?
These words should cut straight to the heart of the matter for all Christians. I’m honestly concerned for the state of our churches. I’ve often wondered why so many are satisfied with showing up on Sunday mornings to hear messages that merely refer to God’s Word rather than actually teach it. How can we as Christians be satisfied every week with messages that are overloaded with funny storys, memorable quips and carefully crafted methods of communication that seek to hijack our emotions? And yet, we call these messages… “deep”?
Don’t get me wrong; sermons need to be engaging. And the scriptures themselves are certainly far from boring! But that’s not what Casting Crowns is getting at when they say the rockstar preacher “won’t wake us from our dreams.” They’re pointing out that pop-church-culture has lulled us to sleep with preaching that is focused on our feelings rather than what actually needs to be said – something that the Apostle Paul warned us about (2 Timothy 4:3). We come away from these types of messages more complacent than ever, thinking that our faith has been deepened even though we didn’t read or learn anything from scripture.
The danger is that the Church can become more about loving themselves rather than loving God and others – Luke 10:27
That’s called convenient faith. It’s a consumerism approach to church that says, “What can I get?” And if we’re not careful, we can all fall into that mentality. Granted, if a church is not meeting your needs where you are, then it’s either time to address that with your leadership, or, if you’ve already done that, it could be time to move on. But still, following Jesus is all about denying ourselves and picking up our cross daily (Luke 9:23). Therefore, church is not about asking what we can get, but rather, what can we give? That involves commitments of time, talents and tithes in whatever way God leads us.
The goal of every local church body should be one that seeks to equip people “for works of service, so that the body of Christ [the Church] may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Ephesians 4:12-16). If this is our goal as the Church, then the question now becomes:
How can the Church grow toward maturity in Christ, especially in light of Covid-19?
This pandemic has caused all kinds of heartbreaking situations, but it has also forced churches to figure out what really matters and just do that. And that’s a good thing! We might want church to go back to ‘normal’, but do you remember what ‘normal’ was? There was no real urgency to be committed to a local church. If you didn’t like what a church had to offer, there were 18 other churches just down the street that you could visit. There was also no real sense of risk for worshiping together as a large group. And for many churches, there was no worry that their doors might need to close.
All of that is a reality for many churches today. But what that’s done is forced churches to pray, and pray continually (1 Thessalonians 5:17)! It has forced churches to program their priorities. And, most importantly, the pandemic has put a spotlight on Christians in such a way that we absolutely need to be the Church; not only on Sundays, but as Casting Crowns says, on Mondays as well! In other words: Christians are called to be the Church all the time, even when it’s not convenient, so that others can see and know the love of Jesus, and understand His saving message for the world (John 3:16).
But what can we do? Well, as the song proclaims, it’s time to start right here. It’s time to start right now.
Maybe it starts by asking our local church how we can serve. Maybe it starts by recognizing the physical and spiritual needs of those around us. Maybe it starts with prayer. Maybe it starts with bible study and not just bible reading. Maybe it starts with our own willingness to be used by God to connect people to Jesus. Because at the end of the day, faith is not just a Sunday thing; it’s a daily devotion to the King of kings, Jesus.