The Church as Religious Cushion

Kevin DeYoung has me pegged:

“No one enters the ministry to further the status quo. Every evangelical pastor, every enthusiastic young Christian for that matter, wants to see conversions, spiritual growth, and biblical reformation where it is needed.”

The rest of his post called “Religious Cushioning” articulates a lot of the things I have been feeling in the second half of my first year as a pastor. He goes on:

“This awareness of sin, I hasten to add, should be of our own sins more than anyone else’s… The temptation, subtle and strong in every preacher, is to preach to other people’s sins. And so our sermons rail on emergents or homosexuality or Richard Dawkins. If we are from a different crowd, we will rail on those who appear not as welcoming, or too dogmatic, or too concerned about everything in the last sentence. Either way, we blast the sins that few people in our church struggle with and most people in our church thoroughly dislike. Consequently, the preacher sounds prophetic, the people appreciate the passion, and everyone feels good about life and ready to face a new week. Church as religious cushion.

But the sin we should hear about most is our own. Just as the iniquity I should most disdain is mine.”

Read the entire post here.

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