If you don’t think you can be a church member and go to hell anyway, please read on. In 2002, I began ministry in a new church. I promised God that I would follow the biblical dictates to structure and build this body of people into a New Testament church. My exact words that day in my study were, “Lord, if I must go, allow this work to be an experiment in the lab of the world for building and maintaining a New Testament church.”
The church today, as was the church of Laodicea, is neither cold nor hot. It is not icy-cold, as is the world who has never heard the gospel. Nor is it fire-hot like a church that knows and accepts its rightful purpose in bringing Christ to the world. Rather, it is lukewarm. Having been forged by the grace of the gospel, we have now cooled down and become tepid, mainly due to our perceived self-sufficiency.
The crowds that show up at our churches are, for the most part, spectators and miracle-seekers. They are not looking for the spiritual growth that comes from the Word of God and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
We send checks to corporate offices and send missionaries to foreign lands, but the majority of American church members have outsourced the Great Commission to a select few, and we have totally absolved ourselves of any personal responsibility to make disciples as we go through this life.
Jesus says that a successful church is one that produces spiritual results in the lives of people. If the church is not producing spiritual results, it is not fulfilling the mission of the New Testament church. Jesus wanted to see if His teachings and examples were taking hold in the minds and hearts of His disciples. There is a reason why He spent three years with 12 men as He set up the New Testament church. The reason is relational discipleship, which cannot be accomplished in large groups as effectively as in smaller ones.
“How to Be a Church Member and Go to Hell Anyway” was the title of a series I preached in my first pastorate. The point of this series was to focus on the things that church members consider sacred and accept as spiritual truth. Mainly, it demonstrated the fact that being religious and being rightly related to Christ are two very different things with very different destinies.
