The Answer to Wide-Spread Church Immorality? Regeneration

After briefly addressing the issue of what the world sees of the church through its window relating to us loving one another, what do I see on Drudge but the following news:

Britney Spears’ 16-year-old sister, who stars as a schoolgirl in Nickelodeon’s popular TV show “Zoey 101,” is pregnant…A high school student who lives in Louisiana, Jamie Lynn Spears reportedly met the father, Casey Aldridge, the son of a Tennessee papermill worker, at church.

As I said in the comments section of my previous post, “[This] is not exactly what I had in mind when I talked about the world seeing the church loving one another…Unfortunately, though, the only time the world really hears or sees anything of the church is when there is either a scandal, or some controversy with the world (or within the church among Christians)”.

Michael Horton, in his book The Law of Perfect Freedom, says, “we must be sensitive to the ironies our secular contemporaries see in our moral behavior…there is a general perception that those who do the most talking about morality and spend the most time finger-pointing are among the most corrupt in their private lives.” – p.180

Without going into some extensive examination of the church’s woes from a moral standpoint, what do I believe, by and large, is the answer which will combat a great portion of immorality within the church?

Regeneration.

Before you jump all over me, I am not judging any single individual or making a determination of anyone’s salvation. My opinion, though, is that much of the professing church today is unregenerate, which is why it is virtually indistinguishable from the world. Jim Elliff has an outstanding article on this issue, which I challenge you to read. Granted, it is focused on the SBC, but I do not doubt that it’s examination can be applied to most other denominations, if not all of them.

So, if this is the primary problem, then what’s the solution? Very briefly, here are a few.

• Preach the whole counsel of God without hesitation or reservation
• Teach that we are to have a faith that leads to obedience
• Eradicate man-centered easy-believism from our churches
• Teach the kids the same things as the adults
• Hold people accountable for their profession of faith
• Exercise church discipline
• Make the center of our worship the Word and the Sacraments (baptism & Lord’s Supper)
• Make church membership a tad bit harder than checking a box on a card
• In a nutshell, raise the bar for membership to something resembling that of what we find in Scripture

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I have little doubt that if churches would implement even a few of these things, the percentage of their current membership being regenerate would greatly increase, either through a mass exodus of false professors or from people actually getting saved who were previously coming but who had never heard the true truth before.

Church is not a numbers game. And the saying is true that what you win them with is what you win them to. Be willing to win them with the truth, for anything else will result in nothing but a church body that mirrors the world, rather than one that shines light into the darkness.

Woe to you…hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.