Tag: pastor baldwin

One thing that Christians should come to terms with is the truism that government cannot do the church’s job. Not in any shape, manner, or form. Yet, by the way many Christians and pastors behave these days, one gets the impression that they don’t really understand this truth. Instead, it seems that many Christians and ministers see the government–especially the federal government–as an extension of the church
….many Christians and ministers today have developed the attitude that somehow the federal government is supposed to enforce by law what only the Spirit of God can enforce through grace. Let’s be plain: the federal government cannot do the church’s job….Here is the problem: our pastors have become spiritual pantywaists and our churches have become spiritual playgrounds. Pastors and churches have sold their souls to success-driven “ministry.” We want big attendances, big offerings, big family life centers, big youth departments, big Sunday Schools, and big-name people on our membership rolls. And we will do whatever it takes to achieve it.
And most of the time, in order to accommodate our overwhelming desire to be a “big success,” pastors and churches will soften the message to the point that the average Sunday sermon is little more than a glorified “how-to-get-rich,” or “how-to-be-happy,” or “how-to-avoid-guilt,” ad infinitum, ad nauseum, pep-talk. Words such as “sinner,” “Hell,” “judgment,” “retribution,” and “repentance” have been permanently removed from the vocabulary of the average pastor. The plain, powerful, old-fashioned Gospel has been replaced with sloppy, mushy, offend-no-one sermonettes that could not bring Holy Spirit conviction if one even wanted it–which hardly anyone does.

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