The Modern Church

In this transcription, the speaker discusses the modern church and its history. They mention that the modern church is not as interesting as the earlier periods because we are living in it. They focus on the American church and the term "evangelicalism" that emerged in the 1960s as a middle ground between fundamentalism and liberalism. The figurehead of evangelicalism is Billy Graham, who held large crusades and focused on a simple gospel message. However, the speaker criticizes the emphasis on decision-making and revivalism in the modern church, and argues for a more holistic understanding of the gospel. So yeah, we're at the end of this series. Does anyone have a favorite part of Trick History we've covered? The cult. The cult, yes. Santa Claus punched that one guy. That was actually my favorite lesson too. Yeah, he punched Arius. I don't remember that. Yeah, Santa Claus punched Arius in the face for denying the deity of Christ. Yes. My favorite is probably either Constantine or the Crusaders or whatever. Oh, the Great Schism? That was a unique lesson because most of it was just talking about Eastern Orthodoxy. Yeah, that's good. I'm glad you guys have favorite parts of this. So now we're talking about probably the least interesting part of church history, and that's the modern church. And it's only not interesting because we're living in it, and so it's not as unique and fun. We're kind of used to it. But it is still a part of church history. We are a part of church history right now as we speak. And so we should talk about what's going on in the modern church, what things happen to give us the modern church that we haven't already covered before, and what are some things that could give a hint as to where the future of the church is going. Now, this lesson is going to be a little scattershot because there's a lot of different things to talk about in the modern church. I'm going to mostly keep a focus on the American church, not because the American church is the only church, but just because we all live in America, and so this is the church we are going to have to deal with, at least most of you, unless you move to a foreign country, in which case you'll have to learn about church history there, if there is any church history. But it's mostly going to be the American church. We will talk about global missions, too, at a different part. But it's going to be kind of scattershot. It's not going to be as linear as I usually try to make my lessons. So the beginning of the modern state of the church is a bit up for interpretation. I picked 1960 because in 1960 there was a lot of change going on in America, and so the church was not unaffected by this change. And this gave birth to a new term for conservative Christians. So up until this point we've had fundamentalists and we've had liberals or modernists. Generally you would fall into one of those two camps. But now with the latter half of the 20th century, with things like the Civil Rights Movement and the post-World War II world, there's beginning to be a bit of a drift away from the hardcore fundamentalists into something that's come to be called evangelicalism. Many of you have ever heard the term evangelical refer to Christians, particularly American Christians? Right. It's very common. You've probably heard it before. And you probably wonder, like, well, why are Christians called evangelicals? Yeah, obviously that has something to do with the Gospel, right? The Evangelion, right? The Gospel. But why would that require a special title? Because very few Christians before the modern era were called evangelicals. Well, we've covered, like I said in the last lesson, we've covered, like I said in the last lesson, how in the early 20th century the church was split between liberals and fundamentalists. But in the 1960s, a lot of conservatives found themselves disagreeing with fundamentalists on issues like the Civil Rights Movement and on legalistic issues like, you know, no alcohol, no women wearing pants in church, things like that. And so they rejected the attitude of the fundamentalists, right, this very legalistic attitude. But they also rejected the liberals and being like, well, no, Jesus is still God, the Bible is still in error, and things like that. And so they became kind of a middle way, you know, a reaction against fundamentalism. So now you've kind of got liberals, evangelicals, and then if you want to go to, like, the furthest spectrum of evangelicals, you have fundamentalists. Because, like I said, most fundamentalists, true fundamentalists, like we talked about last week, are a very small portion of the modern church, and they continue to shrink. Because, shocker, people don't want to go to legalistic churches. So this is where evangelicalism came from, right. So if you ever hear, usually it's used in terms of politics. Like, people will talk about evangelicals being a voting bloc, right. Evangelicals tend to vote Republican. They'll talk about it in those terms. And what they mean by that is basically non-liberal Christians. Because you'll have mainline Christians, which typically just means liberal. So the figurehead of evangelicalism was Billy Graham, who's this guy right here. I forgot that I didn't put that picture to come up later. But Billy Graham. I'm sure you've all heard of Billy Graham at some point. That's basically as far back as most churches go in their church history. They go to Billy Graham. That's where the church started, basically, other than the apostles. Billy Graham, for those of you who don't know, was an evangelist for the latter half of the 20th century into the 21st century. He died only six years ago. He was just shy of 100th birthday, I think. I know. It's like when Betty White died. It's like you were so close. He was. He was only three weeks away from 100th birthday. So Billy Graham would gather these huge crowds of what he called crusades. Billy Graham crusades. I don't think they like using that term anymore, because crusades are icky and bad. But they're not icky and bad, as we learned. As we learned before. As we learned previously, they were completely justified in every way, and they never did anything wrong. That was a joke. Joke FBI. What? The Children's Crusade? We didn't talk about that one. The fourth one was the one where they just kind of didn't do anything except for... No, they stacked Constantinople. Yeah, they stacked Constantinople and never actually went anywhere. Yeah. Anyway. But he called these... This is back when they were fine using the term crusade. And what made him so appealing was that he kind of stayed away from denominational differences and focused on just the simple gospel. Simple, Jesus is God, he came and died for your sins, believe in him and be saved kind of gospel. That's good. Simple gospel can be good, as long as you're not watering down the gospel. But the downside was that Billy Graham inherited the pattern of ministry that was laid down, especially by the Second Great Awakening. If you remember a couple of lessons ago, when we talked about the Second Great Awakening, we talked about how it was very focused on decisions and revivals. That was the name of the game. It wasn't about planting churches and shepherding people and discipling them. It was about getting to the town, set up a tent, get a big revival going for a couple of days, get some people out there making decisions for Christ, pack up, leave the next day and move on. Now, I'm sure Billy Graham had good intentions. I believe he was a Christian, I believe he didn't have any will to spend eternity with him. But this is just what he knows, this is what he was taught, because this is what the previous generation said, well, hey, they did this back in the Second Great Awakening and it worked, so let's do it now. I would argue it didn't work. It worked in the short term, but it didn't work in the long term. But this kind of wanting to get a decision for Christ in your sermon was something Billy Graham picked up in the Second Great Awakening. And so he would always finish his sermon by telling everyone to close their eyes. Let me know if this sounds familiar, right? Sermon's closing, they've got the piano or organ music playing softly in the background. They tell everyone to close their eyes. And they say, if you want to give your life to Jesus, come forward. Or some places they'll say, raise your hand. If you're in the BBS, they'll say, raise your hand. And the choir is singing Just As I Am. They've got a choir singing that. And you're hearing people walk towards the stage or the altar, whatever they call it. And you've got that anxious feeling in you, right? You've got that anxious feeling in you. That's Billy Graham's, that was his shtick. That's what he did. And again, he had good intentions, I'm sure. This is what he knew. But this is a model of Charles Finney. And it's what the vast majority of churches ended up copying from him. They said, well, Billy Graham did it, and look what he did. All right, Billy Graham is a traveling evangelist. He's not a pastor, right? There's a reason that a lot of pastors can't do that week in and week out, because it's the same people week in and week out. All right, you don't want to have the same people getting re-saved each week. Something's going wrong there, right? But we're not going to focus much more on Billy Graham, but the influence of Billy Graham and others like him made evangelicalism a gospel-centered Christianity. Now, that sounds like a good thing. It certainly can be, right? The gospel is the message Jesus gave the church to share with the world, right? So we should be gospel-centered, absolutely. My problem is not that evangelicalism is gospel-centered. It's that it can easily turn into gospel myopia, where the only thing you see is the death and resurrection of Christ and justification by faith, and that's it. And that Christianity doesn't speak about anything else. It's just these very simple things. The ideal for gospel-centeredness is the gospel is at the center, and then you have all these other things building out from the gospel, right? You have your understanding of the church, your understanding of ethics, your understanding of family, right? All that's being built out of the gospel, which is at the center. And so this kind of attitude of, oh, we just need to be gospel-centered, right? Or to say, well, that isn't a gospel issue, right? That is sometimes necessary to say, right? Like, if you're getting in a somewhat heated debate with another Christian over a side issue, like, say, like, baptism or something like that, it may be beneficial to, you know, peel back for a second and say, well, hey, this isn't a gospel issue, right? We're still brothers, we're still, you know, brothers, sisters, right? We can disagree on this and still be Christians, okay? That's fine in that context. But a lot of people can use gospel-centeredness basically to kind of avoid having to talk about anything controversial, right? There were many pastors in many churches who, in 2020, avoided talking about things like the relationship between the church and the state, which was something that a lot of people were thinking about because they said, well, we're just gospel-centered, right? We don't have to talk about anything but the death and resurrection of Christ. And it's like, you should talk about that, but you also need to address things that are affecting your congregation in terms of their relationship with the church. So, this turns Christianity into a very thin religion because it doesn't allow for levels of importance in doctrine, right? There's no depth to Christianity if it's just gospel-centered, which, again, it's not really gospel-centered, it's gospel-myopic. Because we have this mindset that it's either essential for salvation or it's just totally worthless and we don't even need to talk about it, right? And this is why Christians don't know what to do with the majority of their Bibles because a lot of the Bible doesn't directly talk about the death and resurrection of Christ and justification by faith, right? There's a lot of other stuff the Bible talks about, but what do you do with all that other stuff? That's why Christianity is both simple enough for a child to understand but deep enough that the greatest minds in the world can't even scratch the surface of it. It's both of those things at the same time. But evangelicalism tends to simplify it to the point of forgetting everything else. Next, mimicking the culture. So, evangelicals realize that the increasingly secular culture has very appealing aspects. And so they attempted to copy them for a Christian audience. And it's from this that we get kind of a Christian parallel culture. And what I mean by that is this is where we get the rise of the Christian entertainment industry. So this is where you get things like movies, VeggieTales, and fans. Woo! So, those of you who like God's Not Dead, those of you who think God's Not Dead is good, I say this because I love you. You have bad taste. Again, I'm not trying to be mean, but God's Not Dead is a bad movie. Uh, Braveheart, or like any movie beyond God's Not Dead. Yes? Right, I know. Uh, I don't know. Okay, only I can be that snarky. All right. So, this is where we see the rise of Christian music, movies, Christian bookstores start opening. Now, there had been Christian music and films and stuff before this, right? You had like the classic Ten Commandments movie that's like four hours long when you show it on TV that was made back in the... It was made in the 20s, they remade it in the 50s. But that existed. And that was something that the popular culture watched. Like, it's still considered a classic movie. You had gospel music going back to where you could first record music, right? Even artists like Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash Bosa made great gospel music. So, you had this stuff before. So, it's not like this was brand new, like no one had ever made a movie about the Bible or music about Jesus. No, of course it had been around. But the difference here is that evangelicals were taking the culture's music in movies and books and just slapping a coat of Christian paint on it and then repackaging it and saying, alright, here's the Christian... There's a Babylon Bee meme that's like the secular version and then the Christian version. It's like if you like... What was it? It's like if you like Nickelback, you'll love Skillet. Which I think Skillet's better than Nickelback. I actually like Skillet quite a bit. It's cheesy, but it's nostalgic for me. I'm curious. I'm curious. Have any of you heard of DC Talk before? Yeah. Okay. I was going to say ask your parents, but I don't think they would know either. Okay. If you don't know what DC Talk is, if your parents grew up Christian, ask them and they will know it. My parents? Yeah, your parents grew up in Nigeria. They're not going to know this. My mom was Catholic. Yeah. That means she was probably listening to Christian music. But anyway. So this is why, again, if I'm sounding mean towards Christian media, it's because I am. But a lot of it is just, okay, take culture thing, take all the bad stuff out, slap Jesus on it somewhere, and then sell it back to you. Okay? That's where it started. It started in the 70s, right? It started with that. And so it's kind of just this imitation of the culture. And every Christian kid, every Christian kid picks up on that at some point. Right? Everyone does it. Even if their parents are very strict and they're like, you're only going to listen to Christian music and watch Christian movies, eventually they're going to figure out like, hey, this is just like those movies that all my secular friends watch, but it's worse. So I'm going to go watch those if there's a chance. Anyway, this is where you see the rise of that. I'm not going to go much into it. I could rant for like several hours about this. But... Anyway, this is also the time where we see the rise of what have come to be called megachurches. Now again, there have always been large churches. There's always... Some churches have always been bigger than others just because of where they are and the amount of money going in. So... But megachurches operate differently than large churches of the past did. Because megachurches tend to steer away from denominations. Like most megachurches are non-denominational. And they instead operate more like a brand than a denomination. Like, I mean like... Yeah. Like, I've never been to Manna, so I'm not going to say anything against it. But Manna is a brand. They are a brand. They are. Right? They have satellite churches, which is totally fine. Right? It's totally fine to have churches that split off from bigger churches. That's how churches get formed. Right? Even in the New Testament, we see that there are multiple local churches in cities, like the churches of Galatia. So that's fine. But they're not calling themselves like a denomination. It's basically, this is our brand. This is our brand of church. Yeah? Oh, I'm sure all of them do. I've been to Birmingham. Bermuda has Starbucks. I've been to Bermuda once, but I didn't see a Starbucks. What was that? Sorry. True. Anyway, so megachurches tend to operate more like a brand. Megachurches tend to view their congregation as a market to be served. Well, yeah, that actually is a good question because there are churches who are large enough, like about as large as like a manna would be. But they preach faithfully. So, I should have thought of this before I read the lecture. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So megachurch, I guess I would define it as, I guess there probably is a certain number maybe you reach. I would say it's a church that has grown to the point where it has multiple, perhaps has multiple campuses, but it doesn't, it's not operating like a denomination. It's operating more like a brand. It is hard to define. That is a good question. I'll have to look into that more. Yeah, that's true. But there are even small churches that do things for show. That is hard. Right. Yeah. A megachurch is, I guess, more of a style than an actual definable thing. Yeah. Right. Yeah, correct. Right. Yeah, that was Joel's church. We're going to talk about him in a second. Right. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that is why churches would split off into smaller churches. Like, you'd have a lot of people flooding into the church at Rome and it's like, OK, well now we've got to have multiple different local churches in Rome but we're all going to stay connected. I mean, in a sense, that is kind of what, like, Presbyterian church government is where you have a governing body looking over all these churches but they're each local churches. They're like the Catholic church called the parishes, right? So, there have always been big churches like that. Yes? What about the now ununited churches? The now ununited churches? The now ununited Presbyterian churches? Isn't there like church? They would be non-denominational. They might still be theologically Presbyterian but Presbyterian is exactly the style of church government. Yeah. Presbyterian is the style of church government. So, if you're not practicing that, you aren't technically Presbyterian even though you might agree with the theology. Anyway, the main thing I wanted to focus on with megachurches is that a lot of them tend to be their congregation as a market to be served. Not as a flock to be shepherded or people to get involved. They say, okay, what do these people want? How are we going to give it to them? This is why they tend to focus on extravagant music, inspirational sermons. By that, I don't mean like sermons that put the fire in you. That's fine. But I mean like sermons that are not really about Christ. They're more about like here's 10 steps to get better at loving your wife or something. It's like, okay, cool, that might be helpful. But it's not what I want to hear from the pulpit on Sunday morning. I need to be reminded of Christ and his work on my behalf. No, again, that doesn't mean every sermon has to be explicitly gospel or from the first four gospels. But, I mean, Pastor John's a great example of this. He's preaching through Jeremiah right now. Jesus is not mentioned by name in Jeremiah at all. But he's connecting it back to Christ every sermon. Because that's where our only hope is. Is that Revelation? Right. Jesus is everywhere in the Bible. Everywhere. Which is something we'll talk about in the next series. But, focusing on this right now. These churches also tend to produce celebrity pastors. And again, there have always been certain pastors that were more popular than others. This is why we have the books of Augustine and not the books of some guy who preached in Egypt that we have no idea about. So, certain pastors, certain theologians have always been more influential. That's fine. But again, celebrity pastors market themselves more like motivational speakers and not as much as like a shepherd. So, these churches tend to attract a lot of people with this. But, do they keep them there and are they there for the right reasons? Smaller churches, seeing the success of lots of megachurches, wanted to have the same success. And so, they sought out ways to try to get people into their views. Now, to do this, they shaped their message to appeal to people who had either never heard of Christ or had a distaste for traditional Christianity, which is most people in America. Most people in America have heard of Jesus in some way. And this was called the seeker-sensitive movement. And so, this was basically, again, the heart may have been right. Obviously, we want to reach people who are not Christians already. But we can't do that while sacrificing the depth of Christianity, the richness of Christianity. But, the seeker-sensitive movement was essentially, okay, let's water down Christianity to things that will appeal to the non-converter. Okay? The sermons no longer had any level of theological depth. Instead, they were just very, very simple messages. And again, there's a time for a simple message. But even simple sermons can still be rich in terms of things they're applying. These messages hardly ever talked about our need for a Savior from sin. Instead, they just talked about, like I said, how to overcome obstacles in life and develop a more positive self-image. Right? These are things that are going to appeal to the unconverted because it just sounds like the standard self-help garbage they're going to pick up at the airport or something. Right? And this was all done in the name of getting people to church who would never come to church. Okay? Again, a noble desire, but this caused two problems. One, unbelievers were never challenged. And they could never be brought to saving faith if you're not challenged. Right? Saving faith requires an acknowledgment that you are a sinner in need of a Savior. Okay? And two, the church neglected the faithful Christians already in their congregations. This is why many churches today don't view their congregation as people who need the gospel. Right? They think, okay, they've heard the gospel, they've been baptized, they don't need it anymore. No, you need it every week. You need the gospel every week. Yes? The church neglected the faithful Christians already in their congregations. And they said, okay, you guys are already here, you're good, but we've got to get people who aren't in here to come in. Again, that's fine, but you don't do that at the expense of the people who are already there. Right? The Sunday morning sermon is actually not meant to solely be evangelism. It is meant to feed the flock that is there. And if there are unbelievers there, great, hopefully they hear it and they get converted. But you can't neglect your congregation. Right? That's why, again, it's that second great awakening change of mindset where instead of, instead of Christianity being a life of discipleship, it's now a decision and then you just kind of are good until you die. Again, very thin Christianity compared to Christians of the past. This also led to the rise of televangelists. Yeah, so... Which one are you talking about? All of them? Okay, so, let me, let me, let me go through this first. Let me go through this first. So, this was kind of an offshoot of this movement. An offshoot of this movement was the rise of televangelists. Right? So, these were usually megachurch pastors or Christian speakers who broadcast their message through television. Right? And most of what they taught was not Christianity. It was achieved imitation. And they taught what's come to be called the prosperity gospel. They don't call it that, I believe. That's kind of a giveaway. But, it's been called the prosperity gospel. And this is a nickname for the message that basically true Christians will only experience earthly blessings and prosperity. Simplest way I can put it. They didn't teach these things that come about by hard work. They just, they would just happen to you as long as you had faith in God and donated to their ministries. You gotta do that. That's important. You know, sow that seed of like $100 or something. Attached to this was the word of faith message or movement. Yes? Yeah, I mean it's sad. A lot of people in the older generation do. Because, you gotta think. And I hope this doesn't come across as like a snobby Zoomer thing to say. But I think it's true. And that's that for us, we've grown up in internet culture. So we've kind of grown up in an age where like, oh yeah, 90% of things that we hear are probably not true. Like, we're growing up in AI age. Where like, AI can fake Biden announcing the draft or something. Like, we're so desensitized to that. It's much easier for us to see that the person who's talking on the news is probably lying. That's a lot easier for us. Those that are much older, those from the boomer generation primarily, the era they grew up in, they were told, hey, listen to the experts, listen to the people in authority. And that's what should happen. You should get to listen to the people in authority. Right? But that environment was much more like, oh yeah, these people are correct if they're on the TV, right? How did they get on the TV if they weren't correct? And so, for those people, it's a lot harder for them to get that, no, the person who's standing in a nice suit on TV in a big church, that doesn't make them right. So, that might be wrong on my part, but that's just something I've noticed. I say that with all humility and respect for the elders. Not the elders that run this church, but elderly people. Elderly Christians. Because many of them are still Christians. So, attached to the Prosperity Gospel was the Word of Faith movement. They're very closely linked. The Word of Faith message taught that basically earthly troubles and pains can be overcome by essentially declaring the power of God over them. Right? Rebuking them in the name of Christ. So, if you're sick, declare the power of God over your illness. Kind of sounds like Christian science, doesn't it? If you're bankrupt, rebuke the banknotes in the name of Jesus. That sounds silly, but I've seen testimonies of people who said they did that. Did they work? No, they didn't. And he laughed about it too, because he's like, you've got to laugh, otherwise you're just going to cry because of how deceived you were. People actually believe, that's the sad thing, that people actually believe this. And that's usually a point for us to laugh. And there is humor in it, but it's also like, people actually believe this. And they're like, dying and going to hell because of it. Yes? I'm sorry. So, obviously, if you go without saying, these are completely false teachings, nowhere found in the Bible. The whole verse is out of context, because the Bible does say that the left hands follow obedience, but that's also in the context of the rest of scripture, which doesn't make that a guarantee. It's just saying, commonly, if you're sick, declare the power of God over your illness. That's the sad thing. Commonly, if you obey, you won't screw up your life. Yes? Yeah. And it's followed by, or it's preceded by, the fool sets in his heart. But, so, key proponents of this, Joel Osteen, this gentleman, my dad used to imitate him all the time and it would make me laugh. Benny Hinn, this guy right here, Kenneth Copeland, I actually don't think Kenneth Copeland's a real person. I think he's actually, I think he's actually just a demon. I mean, honestly, he looks like a bulldog. He looks crazy. Maybe it's just his picture, but Benny Hinn kind of looks like Sylvester Stallone. He does look a little bit like Sylvester Stallone. You know, it's so funny because Benny Hinn and his nephew used to be a part of this. Yeah, now he's like an actual, yeah, he's actually a Bible-believing Christian. And he's, like, he was doing a couple of poetry, like, like, yeah. Have you seen Mike Wenger's recent video on Benny Hinn? I know that it's out there, but I haven't seen it, no. It's long, but it's... Did he get, like, some, is it, like, illegal to see with it or something? There was something going on between the two of them. Benny Hinn, his ministry kept filing a false copyright claim against Mike Wenger to keep taking the video down, and Mike Wenger finally won. But, it's kind of long, but I think you'd be interested. Okay. Also, Luke, you need to dress as a doll, if you follow me. Why? There's a, there's a, there's two great videos that, that mom... I don't know if I could. Actually, no, yeah, I kind of can. I kind of can. All right, and then, Joyce Meyer, she's my least favorite, because, because, and I love my mother. My mom used to watch Joyce Meyer. She's been sanctified since then, when I was like, really little, like, like three or four. I remember, I'd wake up, and I would hear the TV on downstairs, and I was like, oh no, mom's watching that screaming lady. That's what my dad used to call her, Joyce Meyer, the screaming lady. Are they yelling at the screaming lady, because she would scream a lot? Yes? I figured, yeah. I read, maybe like, half of his stories, like, many of his books, like, it was, it was really interesting, and then I read, like, his death history, I mean, they literally go around buying Rolexes, and spending nice at $10,000 at home, like, they just, are living life. Yeah. They've got their congregation who doesn't have enough money to buy food, and they're telling them, give money, you'll be blessed. Yeah, these people are all charlatans, and shams. I'm going to say that Benny Hinn is, or is it? Benny Hinn is, there's a video of Kenneth Copeland pronouncing judgment over COVID-19, and someone put it to, like, heavy metal guitar. It fits, it fits perfectly. I'll send it out with this lesson, it's amazing. Anyway, so, so you've got all, you have evangelicalism, which kind of gives birth to this mimicking the culture mentality, which then, you know, it's kind of like, you know, which then offshoots televangelism. So, things are not looking great, right, like, the world, America's prosperous, especially at this time, late 20th century, right, we're top of the world, we're beating the Soviets, right, everything's great, but, but things are not looking great for the church, and that's reflected in a continuing conservative retreat from mainline denominations. So, with this rise and water down Christianity, conservatives are, continue to further retreat, because they're already retreating from the fundamentalist modernist split in the early 30s, but now, they're continuing to split, they start new denominations, right, so they leave the mainline, they say, we're going to establish conservative denominations, and some of them are still around today, right, now I can't think of any, I know there's like, there's, well, each, there's a liberal one and a conservative one, so you've got like, the Northern Baptists are more liberal, the Southern Baptists tend to be more conservative, the PCUSA is the liberal Presbyterian denomination, the PCA is the largest conservative one, so you've got stuff like that, but, what many conservatives fail to, fail to realize, is that liberalism is a religion of conquest, right, it's, it pursues until everything is under its control, it's not satisfied by being like, well, I won the big denomination, I'll let you just run away over there and have your denomination compete with me, because we're just, this is a gentleman's game, no, liberalism is evil, they will pursue you until they consume everything you have, okay, this is why, this is why almost all of the conservative denominations today are struggling with liberalism within their ranks, and within their seminaries, right, the Southern Baptist Convention had a big thing about critical race theory a couple years ago, right, and it was getting into their seminaries, like, liberalism, the reason for this is because liberalism has taken over the culture outside of the church, and so you can't just run away from it and expect it to leave you alone, right, it will hunt you down until it has you or has your kids, right, the only way to stop the fight is to stand, that's the only option you have, okay, I forgot to put liberalism first, that's what I meant to put up there, right, liberalism isn't fine with you having your little conservative space, or, well, they might be fine with that, as long as that little conservative space doesn't try to grow and get too much power and influence, right, they're fine, that's called controlled opposition, right, they're fine, like, if you don't do this, don't you dare try to actually affect change, right, you stay there and you keep complaining about how the world gets worse and worse and worse, but unfortunately many conservatives don't understand this, or they do, they're waking up to it, they believe liberalism is just inevitable, right, so they just leave, they're going to take over eventually, let's just leave, seminaries, colleges, mission boards, church buildings, right, you leave behind all these resources, and not that God can't work apart from those resources, of course he can, of course he can, right, God does not need anything, but you still shouldn't just intentionally abandon that stuff out of fear that liberals will take over, right, and starting a new denomination is difficult, especially if it's just you and a few other churches, and so many of these new churches become non-denominational, this era is where we see the rise of non-denominationalism, we are a non-denominational church, we split off from a Presbyterian church, now I don't know, I don't know what exactly happened there, I think from what I heard, the past, this was back in the 70s, the pastor was supporting abortion or something like that, it was pretty shocking for the 70s, like today I would see that happening, but, right, I, so we are, we are one of this church is one of these reactions to that, right, now, I'm not saying there's never a reason to split, I'm not saying there's never a reason to leave, there are, there can be, okay, but, when your reaction is always retreat, retreat, retreat, that's your go-to every single time, at a certain point you've got to say maybe we're doing something wrong, maybe we need to rethink our strategy, because the point of retreat is to get to a fortified position and eventually push back, right, or at least hold that, but that's not what we're doing here, we're continuing to give ground, and the thing with non-denominational churches, one is that they can be hit or miss, right, this church is a hit, absolutely, okay, we're solid, we believe the Bible, we preach the, we preach the word, but that's a rarity, the thing with non-denominational churches is that you don't really know what they believe, because they don't come from a tradition that has a very well-defined confession of faith, right, we have a statement of faith and I think it's very good, I think it's biblical, but statements of faith are meant to be very simple, right, and most churches' statements of faith look the same, right, and so it doesn't really tell you much until you actually get in there and see what the pastor is preaching. Another thing is that non-denominational churches tend to be these kind of islands of Christianity, right, and so they're kind of islands of Christianity, right, they're not really connected to other churches, right, maybe they are in some ways like, you know, friendships or maybe there could be some missions cooperations, but they tend to isolate further and further and further, right, and so all these things build up to a question that I was wrestling with, because something I noticed while I was looking at this was that it's always and only conservatives who retreat from denomination. I couldn't, maybe there is an example, I couldn't find an example of where liberals lost a vote or something and they split off and made a liberal denomination. I couldn't find it anywhere. Right, even when liberals lose votes, they stay in and they keep fighting. It's always the conservatives who say, we gotta leave, we gotta split off, right, we gotta do that. And I was like, why is this? Why do conservatives always retreat? And I think there are three main reasons why this happens. The first one is, and this may sound weird, but I'll explain why, the first one is Protestantism. Now, I'm Protestant, I'm probably Protestant, I'm Protestant to my bones, I ain't never become a Roman Catholic. But, because the Protestant movement was born out of a split from Rome, Protestant Christians generally have less of an aversion to Protestantism than to Protestantism. And the reason why Protestant Christians have less of an aversion to Protestantism is because they generally have less of an aversion to the church splitting. Right? Now, even in that situation, it wasn't like the church split. The Catholic church kicked Martin Luther out. It wasn't like he just said, I'm leaving, I'm gonna go start my Lutheran church. No, they kicked him out and threatened to kill him. Right, so that's a little different than just leaving because, you know, the liberals won. Okay? But still, that history of, oh yes, what's happened, that does make Protestants a little more comfortable with splits. And again, there are times when it's necessary, but it should be done with a lot of sobriety and grief about it. Right? Jesus prayed that his followers would be one. And so every time the church splits, it should grieve us. But that's probably the least important point. The two other ones make the difference the most. The second point is pietism. Pietist, if you remember, three or four lessons ago, I can't remember, the pietists were these Lutherans in the 17th century that essentially taught that the institutional church didn't really matter all that much. And it can even be a hindrance to true Christianity because, to them, true Christianity was just about your personal relationship with Jesus. Okay? And this made Christianity far more individualistic than it was about your personal relationship with Jesus. Okay? Far more individualistic than it had ever been before. Okay? Now, again, obviously, your personal relationship with Jesus matters. And it matters ultimately. Right? But, again, this goes back to that gospel sentence of, like, Christianity is just this and nothing else. No. It's more than just that. But... So the reformers taught the necessity of being born again, that you had to personally be born again whether or not you were born a Christian or born into a Christian home. But they also understood the communal aspect of Christianity exemplified through the formal church, right? That people in your community went to a church and gathered together and sang psalms and listened to a sermon and took the Lord's Supper. Right? But pietism introduced... introduced this doctrine to the modern Protestant church that think that formalized church is a fake church. Right? It really is an attitude of formality is fakeness. This is one of the reasons why I think In order to be genuine or be real it's got to be this raw emotional feeling. Right? That things that are formal or written down or carried on by tradition... No, that's just dodgy and fake. In order to be real it's got to be this emotional thing. And that's just such an immature way of thinking. It's a very immature way of thinking. So, therefore, if we're going to be able to be genuine or be real it's got to be this raw emotional feeling. Right? That things that are formal or written down are fake. So, therefore, if Christianity according to pietism is just about my personal feelings for Jesus then who cares if we split from the denomination? Who cares if we leave behind all these resources all these missionaries all these resources we have for training pastors and ministering to people? Who cares about that? We all have Jesus in our hearts and that's what matters. The rest of the Christian world can burn for all we care as long as we have our good feelings and we're going to go to heaven when we die. That's pietism. And that's one of the main reasons why conservatives retreat because they say well, we have Jesus that's all that really matters. No, that's what matters ultimately but there are other things that still matter. And the last one is pessimism. You like that alliteration three Ps? Right? I know. Pessimism. Everything has to get worse. Okay? You guys know the difference between a conservative pessimist and a conservative optimist? The conservative pessimist says things can't get any worse. The conservative optimist says oh yes they can. Anyway. But by pessimism here I mostly mean a pessimistic view of the future until Christ returns. Okay? Obviously all Christians are optimistic past that point. But until Christ returns what's the future look like? And we talked about last week how dispensationalism introduced this idea that not only are things bad right now but that they have to get bad and get even worse in order for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled. Right? That everything has that history just has to be this downward slope into oblivion right before Christ returns. And so by adopting this view conservatives see no point in fighting anymore. They say why bother if things just have to get worse? If the Bible says things have to go from bad to worse which it doesn't say that it says sinners will go from bad to worse. But if the Bible says things have to get worse then why bother fighting? Why bother fighting? Now there are some who believe that who still fight and I'm thankful for their inconsistency. It doesn't have to be a joke actually I'm thankful for it. Right? If you're wrong I'd rather you be inconsistent than be consistently wrong. But I don't now again there are many that do fight but I don't think you can deny that being told that defeat is inevitable won't encourage anyone to fight. Right? How many of you have been on sports teams if your coach came to you and said you guys are going to lose horribly are you going to play very well? No! Even if you know it's a tough match even if you know it's very difficult if your coach says there's a chance if you work hard if you play hard if you play right you could win you're at least going to go out there and try. But if you're told no you're going to lose. Yeah, okay well then yeah you're not going to fight you're not going to try to hold on to the church that your father your grandfather and great-grandfather were in. You're going to be like well it has to go bad to worse. Yes. Okay, good. I'm glad. Yes, exactly. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You tell them they're not going to win they're not going to fight and then they won't win. And then they're like see, we didn't win. Yes, because you ran away. And again I want to be sympathetic to people in that situation. I've never had to be involved in a church split before. I'm sure it's awful. But clearly this cannot be the strategy that we keep using. Right? The strategy cannot be to lose moan about it you know ask for fundraiser money and then repeat. Right? That can't be the strategy. You've got to figure something else out. So anyway those are the three reasons I think conservatives keep retreating. And this could even apply to just broader conservatism. But if conservative Christians want to stop retreating they need to realize that it's not sinful to want to win. Winning is not a bad thing even in the temporal sense. Right? We're all fine with winning in the eternal sense. But again it's that pietism of like oh, you can't win anything here in the world that's sinful. You've got to just win Jesus. And it's like I love Jesus. Right? And Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. So I want to go barge down the gates of hell. So realize it's not sinful to want to win and that it is possible to win. All right. We've got to wrap this up. The global south. So global south basically refers to Africa, Asia and Latin America. And in this time in the late 20th century while Christianity is dying in America and the West it's exploding in the global south thankfully. So we're just going to briefly look through each of these continents. So Christianity and Africa. There's a picture. I guess they're in Africa. Of the three continents Africa has the most history of Christianity. At least as long as lasting Christianity. So in the New Testament we read of Simon of Cyrene. He was an African who helped Jesus carry his cross. We read of the Ethiopian eunuch. And many of the greatest theologians came from Africa. Augustine was born in North Africa. He ministered in North Africa. Athanasius was from Alexandria. That's in Africa. And so because Africa has maintained a level of indigenous Christianity or even the Oriental Orthodox Church has always been in Africa. There's the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. So they've always been there. But because of the spread of Islam most of the church either went underground or was destroyed. Right? That's unfortunate. Which is why we should have crusaded harder. But anyway. Or crusaded earlier. That would have been even better. We should still be crusading. I agree. We should still be crusading. But again. But the revival of African Christianity kind of started again with European colonization in the 1800s. And you had missionaries like David Livingston who went into I think it was mostly Southern Africa he went into. But after colonization ended in the 1970s and 60s a lot of African nations tried to push out Christianity because they viewed it as the religion of the colonizers. Right? The white man's religion. But then you had many African churches that resisted saying no we actually have a history of Christianity on this continent. Right? It's not the white man's religion. I mean granted a lot of Christians in Africa are Anglican because the British like taking over places or at least they used to. And so they obviously spread the Anglican church there. And so I believe it's either now or it will be soon that the average Christian on earth will be like a 35 year old Nigerian woman who's an Anglican. That's going to be the face of Christianity within like a decade. She's not Anglican though. She's African. But yeah other than that she's the face of Christianity today. Anyway. So that's Christianity in Africa. It is growing. It's exploding. Good job Africa. Next you have Christianity in Asia. Now Asia has the weakest level of Christian presence if you exclude the Middle East part of Asia. Right? Obviously Christianity started in the Middle East so it's big there or it was big there. But speaking from like India all the way to the Pacific according to tradition the Apostle Thomas traveled to India and planted a church there and that church existed throughout the ages until the British came there and colonized it. I think it's still around today but because they were cut off from the rest of Christianity I think they have some weird beliefs but China also received missionaries as early as the 7th century. But in both of these places Christianity did not really take root as you can tell if you look at Asian history. Missionaries came once again due to colonization. I mean colonization was so great. Wasn't colonization amazing? We got Christianity to the whole world. Good job colonization. To quote my Catholic friend we should have colonized harder. Anyway so missionaries were coming in the 18th and 19th centuries. Both Protestant and Catholic churches were established in China and especially in Korea. Here's a fun fact. The current capital of North Korea Pyongyang that's the name of the city before it was communist it used to be called the Jerusalem of the East because there were so many Christian churches there. And the current sorry the communist the first communist leader of North Korea Kim Il Sung was the grandson of Presbyterian missionaries. And Presbyterian parents too. Right so like their Christian heritage is not like that removed from them. That's less than 100 years ago. That just shows you Christianity did take root in Asia. And then after World War II obviously China and North Korea became communist and so they began persecuting churches that wouldn't register with the state. The churches can register with the state but they're usually told they're given the false Bible of the Chinese Communist Party. And it looked like the church was going to be snuffed out but beginning in the 80s and it continues today Christianity has been rapidly growing in China. Rapidly growing. And to this day the church continues despite persecution I know the current President Xi Jinping has been trying to persecute the church harder but they're continuing to grow because you know living in China probably doesn't give you much hope anyway. Like yeah you can waste your life making like Barbie dolls and then die and be thrown into a ditch. So you know not a great existence. And then lastly Christianity in Latin America. So Latin America Latin America is unique because yes I was just going to say it's a place where you know the houses are covered with like the apostles but they have to be the church for 20 years. Right. Yeah exactly. So Latin America is unique because it received the gospel last but it has the strongest level of Christian culture because of all the Spanish and Portuguese Catholics that colonized it. Most of these countries are still largely Roman Catholic. The vast majority Roman Catholic. I think Mexico and Brazil are like second and third or it's like the US, Mexico and Brazil are the countries with the largest Christian population. If you watch like a Mexican soccer match you will see some of the soccer players before they go on there Oh yeah. and then they'll run out of it. Yeah. So it's like most of them are largely Roman Catholic. However this one I'm going to okay there is sort of a mixing in many Latin American countries between like Latin American folk religion and Roman Catholicism which is how you get like Day of the Dead kind of stuff right it's a mixing of Latin American and folk culture and Catholicism but recently there has been an explosion in Pentecostalism down in Latin America. This is why Pentecostalism is the largest is the fastest growing Christian tradition in the world. This is an area of concern not because Pentecostals aren't Christians but because there is a big overlap between foreign Pentecostals and the Prosperity Gospel. Prosperity Gospel for Americans it's around the world unfortunately. But yeah Christianity is growing in the Global South and that's great. We should pray that it continues to grow and that it'll hopefully they'll send missionaries our way because we need them. Alright the return to tradition this might just be an internet trend but I find it fascinating so I'm going to talk about it. There is a more recent trend that does seem to be happening where it's a return to tradition for millennials and Gen Z Gen Z Christians. And this is not overwhelming yet but I think it could I think it could be a big change. By returning to tradition I don't mean that people are going back to 1950s Christianity I mean they're going back to like 1050s Christianity. By that I mean a lot of them are actually converting to Catholicism and Orthodoxy. But I was searching I just looked up Trad Meme and just kept scrolling until I found something good. So again this might just be an internet trend but I find it great so we're going to talk about it because I get to write the lesson and talk about what I want to talk about. So this started with a trend in increasing conversions into traditional Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Now that on its own is not great. I would prefer people not do that. I prefer you be the decent I prefer you be these things an atheist but I'd rather you just be a true Christian. But I think this does show that modernism is losing its grip on people. Right. We're starting to realize that the world we've grown up in is so unsatisfying. Everything is cheap it's fast it's feelings based and it's disconnected from the past. And the church has only leaned into this. We talk about mega churches and by the way a lot of churches some of them have leaned into this. Right. But those that haven't many people want something that doesn't feel like the world. I don't want to walk into a church and have it look exactly like the bar I just went to on Saturday night. I want it to look like something else. I want it to look like it's orienting my eyes towards heaven. And that is something that you get aesthetically in Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Right. Because the icons all over their walls and you know they're very liturgical they're very traditional at least compared to Protestants. And so that's why I think a lot of people are leaning this way. And even though it seems like a lot of people are turning that way I don't think Protestants should decry it or say oh this is bad they're turning to Rome. I think we should lean into this and we should actually recover historic and promote historic Protestantism. Right. The Protestantism of the reformers. Not just their theology but also their view of the church their view of cultural engagement. Right. There's a rich tradition of Protestant cultural engagement that we have just abandoned in the past several hundred years. Right. We should recover our history and present it to people who are hungry for that depth hungry for that meaning. Right. Show them that Protestant Christianity is not mega churches revivals veggie tales and Jesus because that's the level of depth people think Protestant Christianity is. Right. It is so much deeper than that. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to teach this series. One guy I think that is doing this really well is a YouTuber named Radim Zumer. Ok good some of you watch him. I like Radim Zumer he did a 50 minute video on church history he did it in the have you ever seen the video the history of the entire world I guess. He did a church history version of that and inspired me to do this series. So yeah thank you Radim Zumer. He's very good he's promoting historic Protestantism most of his videos are him playing Minecraft while talking about theology which I don't play Minecraft but I like the theology. So I think he's doing a good job of that I would recommend him. The only two things I don't like are that one he's a theistic evolutionist and two he's a little he's a little more pro Catholic than I would be he's Presbyterian but he's very friendly he's very Orthodox but other than that I think he's very solid. Now of course all of this might just be a fad is this just a fad? Yeah maybe might just be a fad right there's tons of LARPers out there there's tons of people who just post who put their profile as the like giga Chad Orthodox guy and think that they're Christians right there's lots of people using Christianity as an aesthetic but movements have to start somewhere right people thought the Reformation was just a fad and look at where we are now okay if anything modern evangelical Christianity will be the fad because it's unrooted it's cheap it's thin and you know it's like a dried up leaf on the ground it's just going to blow away and break apart so I think this is something that should be promoted with caution and with maturity we're we're running behind alright future church history so you've seen the history of the church we're at the end of the series okay now let's go back over again no I'm kidding um now where should we what should we look to in the future well I have some ideas but they're all probably wrong so let's not look at my ideas let's look at what scripture says will always be the case with the church um first the church will be a mixed kingdom we need to get this moving the church will be a mixed kingdom right I hope looking through church history has shown you this that at no point has the church ever not even in the early church has there ever been a church that was purely born again regenerate people church has never been that church will not be that until Christ returns okay the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom the church will always be a mixed kingdom 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