What Are the Biggest Challenges Facing the Evangelical Church in 2016?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | We close out our third full year of episodes

00:00:07.560 | on the Ask Pastor John podcast with episode number 761.

00:00:11.640 | My, that is a lot of grace, that's a lot of episodes.

00:00:15.000 | And so many of you are financial partners

00:00:17.440 | of the ministry who support our work.

00:00:19.800 | And I wanna say thank you for partnering with us

00:00:22.160 | and for making those 761 episodes possible.

00:00:26.300 | As we near the end of one year, we get reflective.

00:00:29.740 | And as we approach the new year, we get prophetic.

00:00:32.980 | And one question we tend to see this time of year,

00:00:35.120 | Pastor John, looking into 2016 is this.

00:00:39.000 | Pastor John, from your vantage point,

00:00:40.720 | what are the biggest challenges

00:00:41.960 | facing the evangelical church today

00:00:44.580 | and into the near future?

00:00:46.360 | What events or issues come to mind?

00:00:48.540 | Well, I'm never very good at contemporary events

00:00:54.200 | or the latest hot button issues.

00:00:58.560 | And that doesn't bother me too much

00:01:00.760 | because I don't think the major challenges

00:01:04.960 | in any generation are unique to that generation.

00:01:09.180 | There are unique challenges to every generation.

00:01:11.920 | They just don't happen to be the main challenges

00:01:14.560 | in every generation because the main challenges

00:01:16.700 | stay the same from generation to generation.

00:01:19.080 | And so when my mind presses into main, deepest,

00:01:24.080 | strongest, greatest challenge,

00:01:27.220 | I think in a sequence from,

00:01:30.320 | there's a cluster of challenges around truth and knowledge,

00:01:35.320 | and that means Bible.

00:01:37.280 | And then there's a cluster of issues around heart

00:01:40.840 | and affection and faith and response.

00:01:44.640 | And then there's a cluster of issues around behavior

00:01:47.860 | or action or deeds in the world.

00:01:50.460 | And so let me just walk through that.

00:01:52.740 | That's the way my mind works.

00:01:54.520 | I just think those are the huge issues

00:01:56.920 | because if you start at the beginning,

00:01:59.440 | the first and great commandment says,

00:02:02.400 | "You shall love the Lord your God

00:02:04.760 | with all your heart and soul and mind and strength."

00:02:06.940 | So I would think since that's the first commandment,

00:02:09.160 | that's the first challenge in every generation.

00:02:12.920 | Does the church, does the world love God

00:02:17.640 | with all their heart and all their soul

00:02:19.840 | and all their mind and all their strength?

00:02:23.080 | And I was talking to Louis Giglio the other day,

00:02:27.440 | on a podcast that he does,

00:02:28.960 | and he said that someone had asked him the question

00:02:31.520 | and he wanted to pitch it to me about,

00:02:33.800 | "Why so much talk about theology?

00:02:36.120 | Why does Piper always come to Passion

00:02:38.280 | and do the heavy lifting of theology

00:02:41.360 | and others get into theology?

00:02:42.680 | And Louis, you're known for taking the Bible so seriously.

00:02:45.360 | What's the point of all this theology?"

00:02:47.720 | And my answer was to quote a

00:02:51.760 | Middle Ages theologian,

00:02:55.040 | and I think it was Bonaventure,

00:02:57.300 | who when asked, "Why don't people love God more?"

00:03:02.300 | His answer was, "They don't know him better."

00:03:07.500 | In other words, if we don't know God, we can't love God.

00:03:11.940 | I'm not one of those people who think

00:03:15.780 | that the intensity of authentic worship rises

00:03:21.400 | to the degree that we don't understand the mystery of God.

00:03:25.760 | I mean, there are people who seem to wanna correlate,

00:03:28.480 | "Oh, my worship is just so strong

00:03:30.440 | when I realize what I don't know."

00:03:32.360 | I say, "Well, there is a sense in which God is vastly

00:03:37.360 | beyond us because infinite is beyond finite,

00:03:41.540 | but our worship to glorify God

00:03:44.520 | must be based on what we've seen of God,

00:03:46.680 | what we know of God, what he's revealed of himself."

00:03:49.320 | If we're just worshiping a haze,

00:03:52.120 | God is not getting a lot of glory

00:03:54.320 | from the warm feelings that we're having in our hearts

00:03:57.440 | because of the ignorance in our heads,

00:04:00.000 | because of the haze over our lives.

00:04:02.840 | I've got this picture in my head

00:04:04.160 | of somebody who runs up to me on the road and says,

00:04:06.040 | "Here's $10,000.

00:04:08.440 | Please go put it in my bank,

00:04:09.680 | and here's my pin, and here's my account number."

00:04:11.760 | And I say, "I don't even know you.

00:04:13.680 | What are you doing?"

00:04:14.840 | And he just said, "I trust you."

00:04:16.080 | I say, "Why do you trust me?"

00:04:18.400 | And he says, "Oh, I don't know.

00:04:19.320 | I'm just trusting you.

00:04:20.800 | I feel inside like I should trust you."

00:04:23.120 | My response is not to be honored.

00:04:24.880 | I feel like this guy's a nut.

00:04:27.520 | However, if he runs up to me and says,

00:04:30.120 | "Here's $10,000 in cash.

00:04:32.460 | Please, here's my account number, here's my pin number.

00:04:34.440 | Would you deposit it for me?"

00:04:35.440 | And I say, "Look, I don't even know you.

00:04:37.400 | Why do you trust me?"

00:04:38.240 | He says, "Oh, I know you.

00:04:40.880 | We work in the same building.

00:04:42.160 | I've been watching you for a year.

00:04:44.080 | You're trustworthy.

00:04:45.480 | I'll trust you 'cause I know you."

00:04:47.640 | Then I feel honored.

00:04:49.320 | And that's the way it is with God.

00:04:51.280 | If we say, "Oh, I'm just coming to God.

00:04:54.640 | I trust him.

00:04:55.460 | I don't have any reasons for trusting him.

00:04:56.600 | I don't need that theology stuff."

00:04:58.360 | God thinks we're nuts.

00:05:00.360 | We're not honoring him.

00:05:02.640 | We're honoring a haze.

00:05:04.720 | And so knowledge really matters underneath the commandment.

00:05:09.720 | You gotta love God with all your heart and soul.

00:05:12.240 | So today, I think the biggest challenge is,

00:05:16.720 | do people know God?

00:05:19.040 | Do people have a knowledge that is trustworthy

00:05:21.920 | and therefore a huge issue is,

00:05:23.820 | what's the role of the Bible in the church today?

00:05:26.200 | And is it trustworthy?

00:05:28.480 | And are people basing their lives on it

00:05:30.400 | and they're preaching on it?

00:05:32.760 | Are they getting the whole counsel of God

00:05:35.160 | so that they can love the whole God?

00:05:37.920 | So those are kind of the first two clusters for me,

00:05:41.800 | all woven together.

00:05:42.960 | The knowledge issues is true knowledge

00:05:45.760 | being disseminated about God.

00:05:47.320 | Is the whole counsel of God really being taught

00:05:49.800 | in the church?

00:05:50.940 | Is the wholehearted love of God happening

00:05:54.040 | in response to this knowledge?

00:05:55.400 | And that leads to the third cluster,

00:05:58.280 | namely, I'm teaching First Peter right now.

00:06:02.520 | And First Peter, if anything is competing

00:06:06.600 | in First Peter with prominence, with hope,

00:06:09.960 | competing in prominence with hope,

00:06:11.880 | that's a big theme in First Peter,

00:06:14.120 | what's competing with it is good deeds,

00:06:17.080 | good deeds over and over again.

00:06:20.480 | So Peter has the conception that we should not

00:06:24.240 | be conformed to the passions of our former ignorance.

00:06:28.760 | Do you see the sequence there?

00:06:30.300 | Ignorance leading to passions, leading to bad behavior.

00:06:33.840 | And he says, no, you're not in your former ignorance

00:06:37.240 | anymore, you've got knowledge of God,

00:06:38.960 | knowledge of Christ, knowledge of hope,

00:06:41.560 | knowledge of the resurrection, knowledge of new birth,

00:06:43.800 | knowledge of the second coming,

00:06:45.280 | knowledge of his care for you at every moment

00:06:47.380 | in your suffering, you've got knowledge,

00:06:49.500 | and this knowledge is gonna produce new passions,

00:06:52.100 | and these passions now conform you to a new set of behavior.

00:06:56.360 | And so over and over again, he says,

00:06:59.200 | keep your conduct among the Gentiles,

00:07:01.920 | honorable and good, so that when they see your good conduct,

00:07:05.800 | they will glorify God on the day of visitation.

00:07:08.020 | So that's our goal in this world.

00:07:09.800 | We're on a mission in this world

00:07:12.640 | to bring people to glorify God.

00:07:14.440 | That is the biggest challenge.

00:07:16.160 | So to know God, to love God, to act in ways

00:07:19.560 | that the world will stand up and say,

00:07:21.280 | whoa, tell me the reason for the hope that is in you,

00:07:24.680 | because you're acting in a way that is so counterintuitive

00:07:27.880 | to my hopes that you must have different hopes.

00:07:30.840 | And then we're off to the races in bearing witness

00:07:34.360 | to the, what he calls, the excellencies

00:07:36.920 | of the one who called us out of darkness

00:07:38.860 | into his marvelous light.

00:07:41.320 | A new year with the same mission.

00:07:43.080 | That is so good.

00:07:43.920 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:07:44.880 | And as we step into the new year tomorrow,

00:07:47.600 | we will be talking about the spiritual disciplines.

00:07:50.600 | And it's a good time to think through the habits

00:07:52.360 | and patterns to set in place for our spiritual flourishing.

00:07:55.380 | In 2016, it's always good to start the new year

00:07:58.400 | thinking about these things, and we'll do that tomorrow.

00:08:00.800 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:08:01.720 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:08:04.320 | [AUDIO OUT]

00:08:07.680 | [AUDIO OUT]

00:08:11.140 | you

What Are the Biggest Challenges Facing the Evangelical Church in 2016?

Chapters