SERIES: Three Keys to Growing Healthy Churches
Fanning the Fires of Freedom
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: I believe there are three keys to planting and growing healthy churches: feeding, fellowship and freedom. So far in this series we have talked about how important it is to feed the flock and to foster fellowship. Now this morning I want us to talk about the third essential, which is that we must allow God’s people the freedom to grow up in Christ.
Freedom is a desperately desired commodity in the world today. All of us have been excited to watch the astounding events in Eastern Europe this winter (1990). A few weeks ago I stood there at the Berlin wall and watched ordinary citizens pounding away at it, knocking off chunks like this one with their hammers and chisels. It was a very emotional experience. Country after country has fallen to the ideals of democracy, without almost no bloodshed. The world is not yet free of dictators, left-wing or right wing, but we may have fewer totalitarian regimes today than ever before.
It is my personal belief that we are seeing a similar dynamic in the Church today. Americans are less inclined than ever to attend a totalitarian church. Fewer people are willing to accept doctrinal views solely on the word of their pastor—whether he is a fundamentalist, Episcopalian, or Catholic. And fewer people are willing to accept ownership in a church unless they can participate in deciding how their money is spent and who their leaders are. Some would view this trend with alarm, for they see no place for democracy in the church; rather they believe the church should be ruled by its leaders or even by an outside entity like a bishop or a presbytery or a synod. I don’t happen to share that view. There is plenty of room for democratic processes in the New Testament, and I believe that sensible congregationalism is the wave of the future. If I’m right, the Free Church is in a good position for continued growth.
Think with me about the kinds of freedom people want and need in the Church. Five come to mind: freedom from lethargy, freedom from liturgicism, freedom from liberalism, freedom from legalism, and freedom from license or licentiousness. These aren’t all equal in importance, and we will be focusing most of our attention on liberalism and legalism, but I want to at least touch upon the others as well.
Freedom from lethargy (Matt. 5:13-14; Zeph. 1:12; Eph. 5:15-21)
Gone are the days when people in any great numbers will attend boring churches week in and week out just because they happen to be members. Institutional loyalty, including denominational loyalty, is one of the casualties of the baby-boomer age. People today are asking, “Is there a better product out there? Can you show me a church where my needs will be met and where I can get involved and actually enjoy it?”
Furthermore, as we are confronted with better and better communication techniques from the media (unfortunately the content seems to be worse and worse), people will simply not put up with dull 45-minute lectures or an hour of meaningless ritual. I believe it was the founder of Young Life, Jim Rayburn, who first said, “It is a sin to bore a kid with the Gospel.” I would paraphrase that only slightly: “It is a sin to bore a congregation with dull preaching.” Now I confess to have sinned more than once in this regard, but I have also repented. Seriously, worship ought to be a time of joy. Sunday morning should be the highlight of your week, and if it’s not, we want to do whatever is necessary so that it is. Matthew 5:13,14 speaks indirectly to this issue:
“You are the salt of the earth. but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.”
A lot of churches have lost their salt and their light. They are just existing, not living. There’s nothing to attract people to the Lord in such churches.
In Eph. 5 we are given a hint as to how the church should deal with lethargy: “Be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We should be a singing church, a thankful church, an encouraging church. But when instead lethargy and complacency characterize the Church, the Lord is not pleased. In Zeph. 1:12 He speaks through the prophet, “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs, who think, ‘The Lord will do nothing, either good or bad.'” Much of the lethargy in the church today is due to the same view—that God is basically irrelevant to our daily lives. How tragic! We need freedom from such lethargy. Secondly, we need…
Freedom from liturgicism
I don’t think “liturgicism” is an actual word—I couldn’t find it in the dictionary, so I made it up to communicate a concept. I couldn’t use “liturgy,” because there is nothing wrong with liturgy per se. As human beings we need form and structure in order to have meaning. And even so-called anti-liturgical churches have their own liturgy—and it’s often not very aesthetically appealing or satisfying. Take the matter of written and memorized prayers, for example. They are anathema in many evangelical churches and we smugly quote verses like, “When you pray use not vain repetition like the heathen do.” Yet many of the spontaneous prayers we offer are also vainly repetitious, and superficial to boot.
When I say we need freedom from liturgicism, I’m referring to liturgy gone to seed, form without function, and worship controlled and dominated by rites and rituals, rather than by freedom and spontaneity. The fact is people are leaving the strongly liturgical churches in droves. They want to worship and praise with the expectation that God will speak something fresh to their hearts, rather than enduring the predictability of the ecclesiastical calendar and the trappings that so often go with it. But like everything else, the pendulum can go too far. “Letting the Spirit move” is often just a religious term for “flying by the seat of your pants.”
Worship should be orderly and dignified, and one of the reasons I’m looking forward to the building of our own facilities is so the atmosphere can enhance our worship instead of detracting from it. Architecture does affect our attitude and frame of mind, but may form and aesthetics never become for us a substitute for function and substance. God’s people want and need freedom from liturgicism. The third and fourth freedoms I want to explore together.
Freedom from liberalism and from legalism
Six weeks ago I took an unscientific poll in the Sunday morning service. Over 1/3 of you indicated that you were refugees from liberalism. Interestingly, just about the same number said they were refugees from legalism. And some were both! The church situation in St. Louis is admittedly worse than in most major cities in the U.S., but we have had scores and scores of people who have come to us from liberal churches looking for freedom from the relativism, the anti-supernaturalism, and the godless lifestyles that are often so rampant in many of those churches. These people were tired of hearing social commentary and political palaver from the pulpit; instead, they wanted to hear a word from the Lord. They sought a church where the fundamentals of the faith are clearly taught, believed, and practiced.
On the other hand, we have also had scores of people come from the other side of the spectrum—fundamental churches that believe and teach sound doctrine, but they allow very little freedom to think and virtually no freedom to make one’s own life-style decisions where the Bible is silent. These people have come to us for breathing room. They appreciate the fact that we force them to think, expect them to make mature personal decisions about lifestyle, and refuse to go beyond what is written as we expound the Scripture.
Now I’m not suggesting that we have a perfect balance between liberalism and legalism in the Free church, but I do believe our doctrinal statement is a very positive asset in this regard. Some churches have no doctrinal statement and that makes it very difficult to keep liberalism out. Others have a 50-page doctrinal statement, like the Westminster Confession of Faith, which though generally a fine summary of biblical truth, gets into far too much doctrinal detail that doesn’t allow for other legitimate interpretations. That makes it hard to keep legalism out. Our doctrinal statement—one page and 12 points—provides both a clear and uncompromising stand on the fundamentals of the faith and plenty of freedom in areas not essential to salvation. Our motto has always been that of an early church father: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.
That is not to suggest that the Evangelical Free Church does not have some legalists in our midst, for we do. Nor is it to say that we do not have those who have taken Christian liberty too far, for we have that also. But I believe as a denomination we have generally managed to escape the extremes on both ends. And that is probably the principal reason for my own love affair with the Free Church. You see, I grew up in a fundamental church where I didn’t experience a lot of opportunity for either freedom to think or freedom to grow; most life-style decisions were made for me. And when I found the Free Church, I found what freedom in Christ was all about for the first time in my life. I believe thousands of others—believers and unbelievers alike—are looking for the same thing.
Enough by way of overview. Let me offer you some Scripture on the subject of
Freedom from liberalism (2 Tim. 3:1-9; Neh. 8:1-4)
In 2 Tim. 3 Paul warns his young protege Timothy that…
“there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
Let’s stop there for a moment. It sounds like he’s talking about atheists or Communists or anarchists. But he’s not—he’s talking about religious people, for he goes on immediately to say, “having a form of godliness but denying its power.” These are people who go to church and go through religious motions, but their lifestyles are completely contradictory to biblical ethics. They fight for the rights of homosexuals, abortionists, whales, women who want to be ordained, and leftists in Central America, but they don’t lift a finger to fight for biblical truth. (By the way, it’s not impossible for some professed evangelicals to fit the description here in 2 Timothy, too. In fact, when I read that text, I thought I might be reading the biographies of some leading media preachers of our day).
Basic to freedom from liberalism is a move back to the Bible. In Nehemiah 8 the prophet dusts off the Scriptures, which had been treated as irrelevant and had fallen into disuse. It says,
“So on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.”
A few verses later we are told that the people stood up when the book was read and then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Where the Bible is honored and respected, believed and practiced, God’s people will be free from liberalism.
Now quickly a further word about freedom from legalism.
Freedom from legalism (Gal. 5:1-6; Col. 2:20-23)
Please turn with me to Gal. 5:1. The book of Galatians is a blistering attack upon any attempt to earn a right standing with God through works (which pretty well defines legalism), and at the same time it makes crystal clear that a life of holiness is possible only as we walk under the control of the Holy Spirit. Listen to this summary in Gal. 5:1: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” The rigid rule-book mentality that so characterized the Pharisees and still characterizes many in the Church today is a terrible distortion of true Christianity.
The legalistic issue at hand in Gal. 5 was circumcision. Some of the early Jewish Christians wanted Gentile converts to be circumcised before they could become members of the Church. They wanted to be sure no one slipped by Mt. Sinai on the way to Mt. Calvary. But Paul destroys their arguments in verses 2 & 3: “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.”
Circumcision, of course, is not a favorite issue of legalists in the Church today. But baptism is in some places, and so is drinking and divorce and tongues speaking. I found a poem by Leslie Flynn in his book entitled, Great Church Fights, which unfortunately describes the attitude in a lot of fundamentalist churches:
“Believe as I believe, no more, no less;
That I am right, and no one else, confess;
Feel as I feel, think only as I think;
Eat what I eat, and drink but what I drink;
Look as I look, do always as I do;
And then, and only then, I’ll fellowship with you.”[i]
Whatever we set up as a human means of achieving a right standing with God, or as a test of fellowship in the Church, lies under the condemnation of Scripture. We are not only not to impose legalism on others; we are also not to let others impose legalism on us. Col. 2:20-23 exhorts us,
“Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: ‘Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!’? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in retraining sensual indulgence.”
God’s people need freedom from legalism!
Finally, I want us to look at …
Freedom from license (Gal. 5:13-14; Rom. 14:13-22)
All through the history of the church there has been the tendency to take freedom too far. Freedom is heady stuff, as the Lithuanians are finding out right now. It can cause people to do things they might not do when completely sober. Interestingly, Paul almost always addresses the danger of license or licentiousness at the same time he denounces legalism to prevent this very tendency. He certainly does so in Gal. 5. Listen to verses 13-16:
“You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”
You see, achieving freedom from one master can quickly lead to enslavement to a worse one. The Russian people achieved freedom from the Czar’s oppressive rule in 1917, but then for 70 years they suffered under a government more oppressive than his. I rejoice at the signs of freedom in Eastern Europe today, but we must be realistic and realize that until those countries get established in democratic ideals and processes, they are quite vulnerable to new enslavements. And the same is true of believers who find freedom from the tyranny of legalism. It is easy for them to gorge themselves on freedom and end up hurting themselves and the cause of Christ. So, we need not only freedom from legalism but also freedom from license.
Several years ago I shared with you a comparison of legalism, license, and liberty that many considered helpful. Here it is again:
Legalism emphasizes works and results in personal slavery and exclusivism toward others.
License emphasizes rights and results in personal selfishness and offensiveness toward others.
Grace emphasizes Christ and results in personal freedom and outreach toward others.
Conclusion: Freedom is very important to us in the Evangelical Free Church. It is even part of our name. Originally our middle name meant “free from state control,” referring to the fact that our forefathers broke away from the state church in Scandinavia. Today it means free of hierarchical control; i.e., we have no group outside our own fellowship that controls how we do church. But to me it also means be free from lethargy, free from liturgicism, free from liberalism, free from legalism, and free from licence.
However, there is no way to have any of these freedoms in their full meaning unless we first have the freedom that Jesus talked about in John 8:31-36:
“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?’ Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
Real freedom comes only when we recognize our slavery to sin and receive the forgiveness Jesus offered through His death in our place on the Cross.
DATE: March 25, 1990
Tags:
Freedom
Liturgy
Liberalism
Legalism
Licentiousness
[i] Source unknown, cited by Leslie B. Flynn, Great Church Fights, 56.