My friend, Dr. Daniel Strand, writes,
“…that Protestant mainline churches used to dominate American life. They ruled the Ivies and produced brilliant and influential public intellectuals. Now we can’t name a single mainline churchman. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
I recently addressed this topic and concluded:
“The mainline consisting of PCUSA, ELCA, American Baptists in the USA, United Methodists, etc., have taken trajectories of death throughout. They have sought to bestow power on inclusivism and anointed corrupt priests to lead the way, and to hell, they led.”
This was confirmed just a few hours ago as the Church of England reached a crescendo of filth “approving blessings for gay couples for the first time.” The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said in a joint statement:
“For the first time, the Church of England will publicly, unreservedly and joyfully welcome same-sex couples in church. The Church continues to have deep differences on these questions which go to the heart of our human identity.”
My exhortation is to fellow conservative pastors: prepare yourselves to absorb thousands of refugees. Conservative ecclesial bodies must invest in catechetical discipleship and build a reservoir of resistance against liberalizing forces without and battle locally and nationally against such forces that seek to crawl their way into the midst of the assembly. People are hungry for ordinary worship, biblical preaching, and a conservative backbone.
But while mainline churches have been precipices of disdain for righteousness, there are additional signs that contemporary conservative bodies are headed toward such ends as well. Forthcoming decisions at ecclesiastical gatherings need to be firm, sustaining the biblical rationale for sexual ethics in all it entails without reservations. There should be no more tolerance for biblical embarrassment among conservative denominations.
The first sign of a failing corpus is the over-explanatory nature by which they undertake to excuse themselves for believing certain principles and affirmations. Therefore, they explain away texts which make them look deranged or unfriendly towards the woke cause. Such signs within these bodies are prequels to well-developed franchises.
The great exodus is already occurring. It’s time to add more chairs to our tables.
