It does not matter if you get your news from MSNBC, CNN, Fox or OAN, all of them have been pushing the same larger narrative. Whether it is orchestrated or not, they bombard us with the mega-narrative that we can no longer govern ourselves. Few of us realize what this means for local churches.
Partisan news outlets (Are there any other kind anymore?) are filled with the same kinds of stories: Each day viewers endure police body cam footage or cell phone recordings of the latest injustice. Accusations of political wrong doing explode with every news cycle. Biased journalists feed a biased public a one-sided narrative that falls short of sound reason.
Then there is the hypocrisy which exists everywhere! Reports of conflict between races, nationalities, and socio-economic groups fills the airwaves. Victims and/or perpetrators are set up on pedestals for ratings sake. Religion gets covered, but not with sane stories of healthy daily life or the good they may be doing in their communities. Instead, religious nutjobs and radicals get all the attention.
All this contributes to the larger narrative that, we as a nation, are becoming ungovernable. And the media is right. But what is more startling is that churches are just as subject to this same ungovernable spirit.
The news media has displayed their self-serving and biased perspective since the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. Perhaps it is time for a new revolution but not like the first one. We need a revolution in the Church.
- It will take a revolution for churches to realize that they are often as ungovernable as the nation and to repent of assimilating our culture’s unsubmissive disposition.
- It will take a revolution to quell the rampant division that plagues the Protestant Church.
- It will take a revolution for American Christians to see that political power is not the same as spiritual power – both in our churches and in our culture.
- It will take a revolution in the church to avoid rebellion in our nation. (Such a revolution in the church starts with humble dependence on God above, rebellion begins with encouragement from below.)
- It will take a revolution for North American Christians to realize that the nation is sick because the Church is sick.
- It will take such a revolution to prod churches en masse to consider their ways and what Jesus might say about those ways, repenting of their waywardness where necessary and fully submitting to His Lordship.
Without a revolutionary and full submission to Jesus’ Lordship in the Church, the world will not find an attractive alternative to their empty pursuits. Without such a immediate revolution in the Church, we blindly participate in a self-fulfilling prophesy, proclaimed by media giants, that we can no longer govern ourselves.
Rev. Mark Barnard serves with Blessing Point Ministries which works to help ministries experience healing and renewal. He is the author of The Path of Revival: Restoring Our Nation One Church at a Time.
AMEN AND AMEN????
This year I have left FaceBook and the political
“talking “ heads. I now find peace and hope in the word of God thru a Bible in the Year plan and prayer.
I support the PCA and their fight to remain a Confessional body.
May your tribe increase!
As always Mark, you have provided troubled minds with a clarion call toward wholeness found in “Divine alignment” which now so very lacking in the church. Government can not be the answer. In fact, it is more than not the problem. The answer is a church submitted to the theocratic reign of Christ for themselves. Sinners will be sinners and produce sinful institutions but let the church be Christ’s church! This revived, renewed and reinvigorated church will models compelling Christ-likeness both in and out side of itself.