Back to Christ, Back to the Cross

Back to Christ, Back to the Cross ~

The church growth movement during the last three decades of the 20th century has brought about an explosive growth of churches worldwide. Churches are growing rapidly in Asia, Africa, South America and the former Soviet Union. Consider the following statistics:
Evangelicals are growing in number, by 4.7% to 5.3% per year. That figure is more than three times the rate of world population growth.
176,000 new believers are added to the church daily.
4,000 new churches are formed each week.
Once the church was predominantly Caucasian; today, 65% of the global church is composed largely of people from various other races.
But, with all this, something is still missing, something very important. The churches appear to have a blurry center. I have had this growing conviction that, if the church is to affect national renewal and global transformation, it would need a new breed, a new generation of pastoral leaders. Leaders who sound the trumpet call: “Back to Christ, Back to the Cross.” They will fill their churches with Christians who are both Christlike and cross-bearing. They will, like the apostle Paul, say, “I have been crucified with Christ…” (see Gal. 2:20). This is the center that I believe the church needs to regain.

For too long we have seen many of our church leaders being entertained by celebrities and champions. As a result, they have become more celebrity-conscious rather than Christ-conscious. They want to become more like John Maxwell, the leadership guru. Or, like Rick Warren, the church-health specialist. Becoming more Christlike is taken for granted, if not totally overlooked.

Also, for too long we have measured success in the ministry in terms of mega-churches—big buildings, big attendance and big budgets (cash). These big churches have become like shopping malls attracting religious consumers, church-hoppers and the curious. People are drawn to our cathedrals, but not to Christ—not to the cross. The result: we have converts but not changed lives, members but not ministers, decisions but not disciples of Christ.

The need of the hour is a new breed, a new generation of pastoral leaders—leaders who will faithfully and fearlessly call God’s people back to Christ and back to the cross. Leaders who will lead the church back to its – one and only center.

In their book, Reclaiming God’s Original Intent for the Church, authors Wes Roberts and Glenn Marshall quote the Cambridge Declaration of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, which states, in part: “As evangelical faith becomes secularized, its interests have been blurred with those of the culture. The result is a loss of absolute values, permissive individualism, and a substitute of wholeness for holiness, recovery for repentance, intuition for truth, feeling for belief, chance for providence, and immediate gratification for enduring hope. Christ and His cross have moved from the center of our vision.” I believe that if the church is to regain its Center, we need to pray to the Lord of the harvest to raise up a new breed, a new generation of transformed pastoral leaders—leaders in whose lives Christ and the cross are central, not just cerebral. Back to the Center—back to Christ and the Cross. Any center less than this is anathema to the Church.

Adapted with permission from: Back to Christ, Back to the Cross by Philip C. Flores – national coordinator for TOPIC Philippines. The article appeared in Evangelicals Today, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, pages 22 & 25, published by the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, Quezon City, Philippines. If interested, you may contact Pastor Philip Flores at this email address: pcflores@laguna.net