Stained-glass windows

The Contemporary Church is Juvenile

This indictment manifests itself in various ways, but essentially the charge here is that contemporary Christianity refuses to grow up!  It settles for a form of Christianity that is puerile and simplistic. Christian bookshops (where they still exist!) are full of shallow theology significantly adrift from the great heritage of Christian scholarship that Christ’s true […]

The Contemporary Church is K – Knowledgeless

In Hosea Ch 4 God indicts His OT Church for (i) its ignorance of God – no truth or mercy (v1) and (ii) its vulnerability to death/destruction for their lack of knowledge (v6). I want to lay the same charge at modern evangelicals. I want to do so on three fronts: First, anyone philosophically astute […]

The Contemporary Church is L – Lost

We completed the previous thesis with Ps 19:7-11.  The challenge was to consider whether the psalmist’s description of his heart response to daily Bible reading matches our own.  Our contention is that progressive knowledge of Scripture ought to be so invigorating that we may easily endorse the psalmist’s judgement – i.e. more to be desired […]

The Contemporary Church is M – Marcionic

Marcionism is an ancient heresy dating from around AD100.  It essentially seeks to pit the God of the OT against the God of the NT.  As with so many theological controversies the root problem represents a failure to properly comprehend the right relationship between God’s old covenant dealings with Israel and His new covenant project […]

The Contemporary Church is N – Bewitched by Naturalism

“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.” (Col 1:16) Dr Van Til left few stones unturned in his life-long endeavour to expound a Biblical view of […]

The Contemporary Church is O – Oligarchical

By this I mean to say that it is run by ‘oligarchs’: i.e., inordinately powerful small groups which operate as ‘celebrity pastors.’ In Matthew 11:26 Jesus commented on the crowds that came out to encounter His ministry. He was moved with compassion.  Why? ‘Because they were (i) weary, (ii) scattered and (iii) like sheep without […]

The Contemporary Church is P – Pietistic

Christian faith has been privatised. Just how this occurred would make for an interesting sociological study, but that it has happened is indisputable. Britain has been a ‘Christian’ nation for centuries. The prevailing worldview has been Christianity with either the Papal Church exercising public authority (for a thousand years or so) or else the Bible […]

The Contemporary Church is Quintessentially Quirky

At the risk of repetition, I wish to address head on the proposition that the contemporary evangelical Church is culturally quiet – i.e. it is unwilling to address cultural trends either positively or negatively.  In short, it unlike ‘the children of Issachar, men who understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do’ (1Chr […]

The Contemporary Church is R – Reductionistic

The Churches, we have seen, are full of pigmy Christians who refuse to grow up! Nowhere is this more apparent than in the (few) Christian bookshops that still exist in the highstreets.  [God has most likely removed them for their compromise to significant/meaningful truth!]. The reductionism that characterises contemporary ‘churchianity’ is exemplified by the way […]

The Contemporary Church is S – Statist

The contemporary Church has made an idol of the State.  It pays token tribute to Christ as ‘Lord of all’ on Sunday morning from around 10.30am till 11.45am but then reverts back to its default outlook on Monday morning whereupon Caesar again takes up the reins.  Alas, even on Sunday morning, affirmations (sung or muttered) […]