The Lukewarm Church, or Failure to Report? Part 1

"I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say , I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked."        Revelation 3:15-17. (ESV)

I have long thought that the letters to the seven Churches of Revelation represent a total overview of the condition of the whole Church in any and all eras of history. This unlike many of  my peers who try to look at them as seven progressive descriptions of the condition of the church in seven progressive eras of history.

In the past, I have had occasion to rethink my positions on numerous biblical issues. I have begun, in just the past few days to rethink this position. It still seems awkward to me, at best, to try to make the other six churches fit into the particular eras of history in which these interpreters wish to place them. It kind of reminds me of trying to fit a size six shoe on a size nine foot! The only thing that they have in common is that they are feet, and that they belong in a shoe!

The reason I am wondering if I am wrong about my interpretation is that today's Church seems to be indifferent, lukewarm if you will, to the challenge that is before them. Moreover, I am failing to see any evidence to the contrary.

In recent days we have had a tremendous door of opportunity open before us. The persecution of the Obama era (yes, that is an exaggeration, but only a slight one) and the potential continuation of that persecution under Mrs. Clinton has been temporarily stayed. Instead of occupying ourselves with self-defense and self-preservation, we now have opportunity to focus on the task before us of taking the gospel to ". . . every nation, people, tribe, and language . . ." (Rev. 5:9).

So the question that I am asking myself which gives rise to this two-part series is: "Is the Church becoming lukewarm in the pursuit of our Christ-given mission, or is the world of media simply failing to report what we are doing? It could be either one, frankly, and my jury is presently still out as to which it actually is. I am increasingly troubled, however, that I am seeing no indication that we are making progress toward bringing the good news to the unreached people-groups.

In this first segment, I will explore the thought of the lukewarm Church.

There seems, first of all, to be a total lack of awareness that this all-important task is as of yet unfinished. In talking with others, there seems to be a pervasive, but erroneous belief that this task has been long-since completed. As I have pointed out many times in the past, nothing could be farther from the truth! I haven't checked Wycliffe recently, but the last time I did they were over 1700 languages short (check my post of January, 2016, "What Part of the word, "glosses" don't you understand" for a brief overview). And speaking of Wycliffe, even they don't seem as excited about completing this task as perhaps they should be. The exact number of untranslated languages can be a bit hard to find on their website, and usually requires a bit of exploration. It seems to me that the countdown to zero should be prominently featured on their homepage.

As I have also pointed out in the past, few, if any missionary organizations are making mention of progress in this regard. Most, if they are reporting any progress at all, are reporting increasing numbers in areas where they are already operating. I am currently a Southern Baptist. Our foreign missions organization is probably the largest in the world. The literature that is coming from them to the churches indicates not only that they are not reaching out to unreached language-people groups, but that they are not even so much as setting goals to do so. It is as if they are totally unaware that there is even such a thing as an unreached people group. This seems to be typical of the attitude I see  expressed (or being failed to express) in literature of other missionary organizations.

As, I stated, this may be a case of failure to report what is really going in the missionary world. I will explore that idea in my next post. In the meantime, let us pray that the Lord will send forth laborers to the harvest, and that we will not be lukewarm and indifferent to the important task before us.

This state of lukewarmness goes beyond indifference to missionary outreach. As I have also pointed out in previous posts, we are indifferent to the pursuit of the things that make us different from the world at large. We gauge our blessings in terms of material wealth. Many of our Churches even measure their success by their attendance and the size of their offerings. As our Lord says to the church  Laodicea above:

"you say , I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked." 

Does that sound like us, or what?

Let us pray that we will not be like the lukewarm church like Laodicea. Let us pray that we will approach our mission and our life and witness before our own communities as our Lord has commissioned us to do.

Let us also pray for the peace of Jerusalem (and all of Israel)

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.