Your Church’s Persona Should Reflect The Truth, & Not Mask It
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(14) <Jesus said, to the ‘Church of Pergamum’>, “Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. (15) Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. (16) Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.”’ (Revelation 2:14-16)
An item that caught my attention was an article about Texas, which pointed out a ‘truth’ about the Lone Star State; that the persona or outward face of Texas is one of independent personal ruggedness; one of ‘God, Guns, & Guts’, the Alamo, and ‘macho’ cowboys ready to lay a smackdown who breaks the paradigm of ‘don’t mess with Texas’. However, there are several items that goes against this paradigm. There are glaring points where Texas is not bucking ‘woke’ culture but embracing it, especially in the cities of Austin, Dallas, and Houston. In these cities the proliferation of drag shows for children that are held in Texas’ large cities in defiance of existing state law and Godly morals, for example, clash with the portrayal of Texas being filled with rugged ‘Marlboro Men’ riding horses on the fence line of a cattle ranch.
While Texas portrays a ‘tough’ outward persona that they want everyone to believe, the reality is Texas is very soft – soft on crime, and embracing ‘woke’ culture. Texas wants to be the symbol for ‘doing things right’ but the reality is that is a mask covering the true Texas nature of following the crowd that is now secular America. While this may not reflect all Texans, it would appear based on what is taking place in Texas’ metropolitan areas, the majority is ‘woke’ while a minority represents the ‘proper and true’ ideals that Texas used to and should have.
The same can be true of ‘Christian’ churches. A 2022 poll showed that while 82% of Americans claim to be Christian, only 48% of those ‘Christians’ believe that God listens to or answers prayers. Another article provides a startling statistic; “pastors leading churches that attract 250 or fewer people are nearly three times more likely than the pastors of larger congregations to consistently believe and act upon God’s Word; while 42% of the pastors of smaller congregations have a biblical worldview, only 15% of those serving larger churches do.” (1)
The ‘persona’ of Christian churches, and their pastors, is one of ‘we follow God & His Word’, but the reality is the majority of churches do not, as a church follows the lead of their pastors and elders, and the majority of pastors (58% of small church pastors/85% of large church pastors), according to the poll, do not have a Biblical worldview. We see this in several denominations that have adopted doctrines against Scriptural doctrine; the removing of ‘hell’ and the consequences of sin, even the removal of God as the Omnipotent Creator of All Things. A correlation can be made that the majority of churches and pastors are more concerned over attracting the number of people coming to fill seats and not attracting the number of people toward Christ to receive Salvation.
Jesus points out these churches that do not follow his ‘persona’ in Revelation. Pergamum, now Bergama, is an ancient Greek city that is on Turkey’s northwest Mediterranean coast. The ‘old’ city itself was destroyed by an earthquake in 262 AD, with the Goths plundering the ruins soon after. The ‘new’ city was built in a valley below the ‘old’ city.
In the time of Apostle John’s writing the book of Jesus’ Revelation, Pergamum (like many of the cities in Asia Minor visited by Paul and written by John) was a port city that was filled with competing religions, with many temples built for the worship of Greek and Roman Gods. The early Christian missionaries, likely colleagues of Paul, established a Christian church there, and although there are only the references of the church in Revelation (as one of the seven churches described in Revelation 1-3), it most likely was an important church in the early advancement of Christianity, being located where much global and regional trade took place, which allowed the Gospel to go from there outward to other lands.
But like the majority of today’s churches, it appears the leaders of the ‘1st Baptist Church of Pergamum’ started to sway away from Scriptural doctrine and the Gospel message, and went toward a more secular doctrine; one that perhaps the church leaders partnered with other religious, non-Christian groups to feed people food from a place of idol worship. Like the churches of today, it likely compromised in one area of worship, which led to other compromises.
The church leaders are compared to Balaam, who in Numbers 22 encouraged King Balak of Moab to entice the Israelite men with the Moabite women in committing acts of sexual immorality (the key ones of ‘sex outside of marriage’ and ‘sex with a non-Jew’) and to worship the false god Baal, in Numbers 25. Likewise, the Pergamum church leaders likely began to see they could entice large numbers of people to join the church by going along with ‘the current thing’ in their society, and in the compromise to bring people in, the church became poisoned with secularism, pushing God’s Word out of way in order to be popular.
We see these CINO (‘Christian In Name Only)’ churches are doing the same thing as Pergamum did; they attract people in with actions of secular approval, until it no longer is Christian. The Christian church should never embrace acts of Biblically-defined immorality, and the church should never exist only for being an attraction to bring people in.
The true Christian church should be concerned about teaching Biblical truths, to prepare the people to go ‘out’, to be different from society while walking among it and be the beacons of light that attract people to Jesus and not simply the show that mentions Jesus for ‘style points.’ Hold fast and never be swayed by what is popular, but be swayed by Godly righteousness. Just like Texans need to be ‘real Texans’, more so do Christians need to be ‘real Christians’ and stand for Christ!
(1) Rethinking Your Relationship with the Church, George Barna, Washington Stand, 3 July 2022
