Some years ago, there was a mania in theology in which some theologians argued that the church needed to let the world set the agenda for the church. The church was to be oriented radically for and to the world. There is a certain truth to this turning of the church toward the world. Has not Christ told us that God has loved the world (Jn 3:16)? The church's mission is to proclaim Christ and His salvation for the sake of those who are not yet saved. What is that but to turn toward the world? But like all truths it can be bent by overemphasis. At the time that this thinking emerged in public theological discourse, many theologians warned that this emphasis would begin to bend the church into the world. If the world sets the church's agenda, then the agenda will no longer be Christ's. In the heady days of the 1950s and 1960s this sounded like Chicken Little's warning. The church seemed to be growing and getting with the world's agenda all at the same time.

The idea that the world should set the church's agenda had legs, despite all the warnings. Although the theological sources of this movement are now passé, their ideas seemed to have crept into the churches' practice like a virus that infects a host. Now the churches no longer preach sin and grace, law and gospel. The churches now preach good advice about life in this world. Not long ago, a well-known pastor, not known for his theological depth, declined to say that Christ was the only way to heaven on national television for fear of offending his viewers. Everything must be "user-friendly;" however that might be defined. The churches no longer accuse us of sin, even though this is the divine mission (Jn 16:8). Sin is just something to be passed over or ignored for fear of hurting "market share." The church's life must remain centered not in our wants or desires but in God's mission for the world.

Therefore we must not let worldly standards judge the church's proclamation, or her blessings and gifts. For the world's standards must be inimical to Christ's. His kingdom is not of this world (Jn 18:36) and therefore this world will never support, encourage, or agree with His mission. The world is blind and will never see the glory of Christ in His suffering and death. The world will never recognize the gifts of Christ or His glory in the weakness of the church because it does not have the tools to understand these great spiritual things (1Co 2:14). If the church hands over its agenda to the world, it will be betraying God's Son anew and inheriting in His place a mess of pottage. Neither the church nor the world will be better off, the church having betrayed her Lord and King and the world being deprived of the message of salvation.

This is not a matter of keeping the nasty old world out of our churches either. For the world dwells in the heart of every fallen human in the world, that is, in me dwells no good thing (Rm 7:18). Battling the flesh is not a matter of keeping "them" out. Every one of us will have to keep up the war against our flesh until God dissolves our flesh at death. What does this mean for the church's agenda? It means that the world's agenda lives in every Christian and can creep into our churches through our own fleshly mouths. Every word that proceeds from our mouth therefore, must be judged according to every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Mt 4:4). 

John Chrysostom