The Church and the World

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 JOHN 2:15

For more than forty years Tozer spoke to the church as a prophet speaks to Israel. He loved it, he served it, and he never stopped telling it what was wrong with it. Much of that ministry was carried on through his editorials in The Alliance Weekly, short pieces written week after week and afterwards gathered into books such as The Root of the Righteous, Of God and Men and That Incredible Christian. Again and again they return to one great complaint. The church, he said, had made its peace with the world, and in doing so had lost the very thing that made it the church.

The world in the sanctuary

Tozer did not mean by worldliness chiefly the old list of forbidden amusements, though he held strict views on several of them. He meant something deeper: the adoption, by the people of God, of the spirit, values and methods of a society that does not know God. The world measures success by size, and so the church began to measure itself by numbers. The world runs on publicity, and so the church learned to advertise. The world worships celebrity, and so the church produced its own celebrities. The world must be entertained, and so the church began to entertain.

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. ROMANS 12:2

He was especially sharp about the last of these. In a booklet on the religious film, and in many editorials, he protested against the drift of evangelical churches towards performance, spectacle and amusement as a means of attracting people and holding them. He believed it was not a harmless modernising of method but a change in the nature of the thing. A congregation that must be entertained to be held has not been gripped by God. In the sermon All with One Accord, in the Ochorus library, he put it plainly: turning a church into a music hall or a debating club does God no service. A church is a gathering of people who have been touched by heaven and who meet to hear the Word, to pray, to give and to sing to God — even if, he added, they sing a little off-key.

Religion without God

Beneath the complaint lay the diagnosis that runs through all his teaching. The church had not lost its orthodoxy. It had lost its awareness of God. And a church that has lost God must fill the gap with something. Entertainment, programmes, organisation and activity are what rush in when the presence of God goes out.

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. JEREMIAH 2:13

Tozer believed that many of the church’s leaders did not even notice what had happened, because the machinery went on running and the numbers went on rising. That was what made the situation so dangerous. The church at Laodicea was prosperous, busy and entirely content — and the Lord was outside the door.

Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. REVELATION 3:17

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. REVELATION 3:20

Separation and love

What was the remedy? Tozer called the church back to the New Testament. In All with One Accord he said that it is the business of every minister to see that his church is a New Testament church in its beliefs, its practices, its methods and its aims, because in every age some influence arises to draw God’s people away from that pattern. He called believers to a real separation from the world — not a withdrawal from the world’s people, whom Christ came to save, but a refusal of the world’s spirit.

Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. 2 CORINTHIANS 6:17

He also knew that such separation is costly. A church that refuses the world’s methods will often be smaller, plainer and less admired. A preacher who says these things will not be popular. Tozer accepted both costs. In one of his sermons he said, in effect, that he would rather be true than be nice.

Weighing it

Tozer’s critique of a worldly church is prophetic in the proper sense. Much of what he warned against came to pass on a larger scale after his death, and his words have a sharper edge now than when he wrote them. The church needs to hear them.

But here the reader meets the second of the cautions raised in the introduction. Tozer could be severe to the point of unfairness. His broad strokes sometimes fell on sincere believers who were doing their best with the gifts they had, and his scorn for fellow ministers could run beyond what charity allows. Some of the particular things he condemned — certain styles of music, certain uses of film — were matters on which Christians may honestly differ, and his own preferences were not always the same as the mind of God.

Speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. EPHESIANS 4:15

The prophet’s task is necessary, but it is not the only task, and a prophet who never speaks tenderly is in danger of forgetting that the church he rebukes is the bride of Christ. Take Tozer’s diagnosis to heart. Test his particular judgements by Scripture. And rebuke, when you must, with tears.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Read Revelation 3:14–22. Ask whether anything in your own church, or your own life, resembles Laodicea.

2. Name one way in which you measure your spiritual life by the world’s standards of success. Lay it aside.

3. Consider what draws you to church. Would you still go if there were nothing there but the Word, prayer and the praise of God?

4. Before you criticise another believer or church this week, pray for them first by name.

5. Read Tozer’s sermon All with One Accord in the Ochorus library, and ask what a New Testament church would look like where you are.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You loved the church and gave Yourself for it. Forgive us, Your people, for making friends with the world that crucified You.

We have been busy and prosperous and content, and we have not noticed that You were standing outside. Come in.

Deliver me from the spirit of the age, from the love of numbers and applause and amusement. Make me content with You.

And when I see what is wrong in Your church, give me Your tears as well as Your truth. Amen.