After a week in Florida, yesterday we headed toward home, driving as far as Myrtle Beach, where we’ll spend a few days. While driving, I use the GPS, but also occasionally check in with Google Maps. I’m glad I do. Yesterday, Google told us to get off of Interstate 4 just before we reached Orlando. It re-routed us to some toll roads because of a traffic accident. We later heard on the radio that traffic was backed up over an hour and 15 minutes on I-4. Both the GPS and Google can get you there. But Google Maps adapts, and the GPS does not. For 15 minutes, the GPS was so set in its ways that it kept telling is to go back to I-4!
We went to a Baptist church on Sunday in Lakeland. They had 3 worship services. Two of them were called “progressive” worship services. Progressive meant they had a band and sang the Chris Tomlin version of Amazing Grace instead of the standard John Newton version. Progressive did not mean they changed the Gospel, but did change the packaging and presentation. It did not mean they condone what the Bible teaches as sin. It took guts to call their worship progressive because the term has been hijacked to mean (in my opinion) those things the Bible warns us about, just as the rainbow had been hijacked to tout anti-Biblical teaching.
Where the Bible says the church will err, is in belief. It warns that people will waver and believe what they want to believe. And boy howdy, is that ever happening. The church must indeed adapt. But we have been warned not to change the content. The Gospel does not change. Sin does not change.
It’s long past time for the church to adapt and get progressive. Not progressive to be like the world, but a type of progressiveness that reaches the world – and that will look different than church looked in the 1950’s, but retain the same message of sin, repentance, and forgiveness.
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Scott Knowlton's Blog 