In 2009, author Daniel Henderson wrote in an article posted on Christianity.com, that “the American Church” is like a frog in a kettle that has acclimated to the surrounding environment. That is to say, the church has become like the world.
He references the work of another writer, Michael Spencer, from the Christian Science Monitor (no relation to the cult of Christian Science, which is neither Christian nor Science). Spencer predicted that within ten years, the influence of evangelicalism would collapse. Henderson went on to reference a speech made by President Obama that referred to the US as a “secular nation” as one predictive mark.
Towards the end of the article Henderson says: “I believe the water in which we are boiling is our own spiritual apathy, missional indifference, and prayerless irrelevance. In essence, the frog stands in danger of boiling in its own water. Just as Jesus warned some of the churches in Revelation chapters 2 & 3 about their precarious spiritual condition, we too must recognize our own need to take responsibility for the situation.”
So it’s been twelve years - it’s early 2021. We are in month 12 of the Covid-19 pandemic with no real signs of significant change in public policy or opinion on the matter. Countless churches remain closed, and our little congregation that meets in the upper east side of Manhattan remains open. We continue to have a steady flow of visitors that cycle through, checking out our church.
Observing the last several months has brought this image of a frog in a kettle back to the forefront of my mind. There is a certain way of doing church that seeks to make the church as much like the world as possible. The agenda being to make the gap between the worldview of the New York Times and the New York City pastor as small as possible. When NYC churches have attempted to wed the admittedly “failed strategies” of the seeker sensitive movement to reformational thought, the pragmatics always eventually take center stage and push theological conviction out the back door. This creates a crisis for the regenerate in the pew, who are indwelled by the Spirit of God and hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, yet notice it’s absence in the worldview of their preachers. It creates a problem for the sheep who come to church seeking to hear the Good Shepherd’s words and instead hear a steady stream of goats and wolves.
Instead of hearing the words and worldview of Jesus, Christians are hearing the words and worldview of ibrahim x kendi, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Anthony Gramsci, and Michel Foucault. It naturally follows that these woke churches have also built an atmosphere of acceptance of every manner of deviation from Scripture in all other areas of culture and personal morality. The result is a church in which godliness seems strange and worldliness seems normal. It is normal to have unmarried couples living together and hosting small groups. It is normal to be a pro-choice Christian and member in good standing, while working for a nominally pro-life crisis pregnancy center. It is normal to have church sponsored BLM marches, with pastors linking arms with the the entirety of the spirit of the age.
So “congregants” (as they are called - “meaningful membership” is rarely a thing) get accustomed to this liberalism, which like the religion of liberalism of the last century is actually an alternate religion to Christianity. But these congregants often do not realize that they have become accustomed, like the frog in the kettle, to the water in the kettle. So when they jump into a different temperature of water, they find it shocking, and like the frog, hop on out due to the shock of hearing words like “sin” rather than “struggle” and “hell” rather than - well… no hell (implicit annihilationism/universalism are common among NYC pastors, therefore conversionism is replaced with transformationalism. “Ye must be born again” is replaced with “ye must redeem the culture/city”).
So visiting congregants say “Your preaching is too long/confrontational/dense/bible saturated/unrelatable/hostile” but do not realize that the temperature of the kettle that is Manhattan evangelicalism is actually so far from a Biblically regulated Christianity that it seems strange and offensive to hear preaching that involves doctrine, correction, and instruction in righteousness. It is a “turn off” when preaching involves reproving, rebuking, and exhorting unto righteousness. It is deemed “unpastoral” to warn of fierce wolves that are devouring flocks. The only thing bad is saying anything is bad. It is unloving to call sinners to repentance.
This is the zeitgeist that has rendered scores of churches impotent and devastated their flocks. And sadly, some believers who wander out of those burning buildings don’t realize that it’s precisely those things which destroyed those churches. The spirit of the age - the worldview that was taught, is what brought about such devastation. What woke church survivors must do, rather than “divest themselves of whiteness” is divest themselves of all the remnants of this rank humanism and tune their hearts to the temperature of the water that flows from the river of life - which is quite a bit different than the water in the world’s kettle.