You do not have look far to find a survey that indicates people are leaving the church….in droves. The church is no longer “relevant” to their lives. And they may just be right, depending upon what you consider to be the “church” and what your definition of “relevant” may be. A better question for the pollsters to ask would be this; has the church left the people? The easy answer is yes, but for many different reasons. Some no longer embrace scripture as the authoritative Word of God, holding instead to a relativistic theology with subjective standards of truth. Fitting into the culture is more important that influencing the culture. For others, the “style of worship” is emphasized over the “substance of worship”. For too many the standard has become a non-biblical measure of church growth with little or no accountability for spiritual growth. In Together for the Gospel’s Affirmations and Denials, Article III, this issue is well summarized: “We deny that truth is merely a product of social construction or that the truth of the Gospel can be expressed or grounded in anything less than total confidence in the veracity of the Bible, the historicity of biblical events, and the ability of language to convey understandable truth in sentence form. We further deny that the Church can establish its ministry on a foundation of pragmatism, current marketing techniques, or contemporary cultural fashions.” Sadly, all of the above have become the norm.
If you have found that the church has left you, we encourage you to visit PABC Wilmington. This is what you can expect:
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Reverent Worship
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Music that is intended to prepare the heart and mind for receiving truth
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Expository Preaching
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The ever relevant truth of scripture for your daily life
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Christ-centered fellowship
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A caring church family