On a recent visit of our area nursing home a thoughtful resident said to me after the chapel service, “I can tell that your church isn’t a slack church. There are too many slack churches these days!” I perceived this lady had attended a mainline church in her day and witnessed it, and others like it, steadily decline due to slackness. (The tragedy is they had not always been slack). By slackness she meant faithful, true, devoted, committed to the Faith.
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Many dying (and dead) churches are:

• Slack in the articulation and presentation of the Gospel
• Slack in their adherence to historic Christianity
• Slack in regenerate Church membership
• Slack in regular worship
• Slack in the administration of the ordinances
• Slack in the preaching of God’s Word
• Slack in corporate and personal prayer
• Slack in discipleship
• Slack in family worship
• Slack in evangelism
• Slack in their moral standards
• Slack in their accountability
• Slack in their fellowshipping with “one another”

Rather than being slack the Lord desires us to be strict, not cruel as in the negative sense of the word but diligent in the positive sense. (We show ourselves diligent when we love and believe in and know what God has called us to as the Church).
Healthy churches are:

• Strict in the articulation and presentation of the Gospel
• Strict in their adherence to historic Christianity
• Strict in regenerate Church membership
• Strict in regular worship
• Strict in the administration of the ordinances
• Strict in the preaching of God’s Word
• Strict in corporate and personal prayer
• Strict in discipleship
• Strict in family worship
• Strict in evangelism
• Strict in their moral standards
• Strict in their accountability
• Strict in their fellowshipping with “one another”

In a word, healthy churches seek to be faithful to the Biblical design for the Church.

Even though the rainbow is such a beautiful aspect of Creation and a reminder of God’s covenant with man to never flood the earth as a judgement for our sin again, it has been hi-jacked of late to represent a double godlessness in the spirit of Isa 5:20 and Ro 1:32.

The month of June was labelled “pride” month and the rainbow flag, taken up as a symbol of the LGBT+ community (there is an irony here[1]), was flown from many school and government flag poles, hung in residential windows, etc. Those who fly it symbolically encapsulate Isaiah’s charge to ancient Israel, who celebrated calling “evil good and good evil.” Yet this flag represents more than simply the diversity of expression within this community (itself not a hegemonic movement either[2]), it is coming to be a representative flag of our times.

The rainbow flag is not simply being flown during the month of June; it is gaining a popularity far beyond those who support the LGBT+ movement or sympathize with them. The pride flag is growing in popularity because it stands for the values of the age: post-modernism, diversity, difference, acceptance, “tolerance,”[3] etc. In effect it is the new symbol of moral anarchy, that everyone can believe and do what they like and no one can tell them otherwise. It is the warrant to be licentious. It is an embrace of the pride of the diversity of sin. Now, someone need not be LGBT+ or even support this precise cause, the flag is taking on a new meaning as a symbol of your support for the right of others to sin so that you yourself may do as you please: Though they know God's decree that those who practise such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practise them. (Ro 1:32).

As such the rainbow flag has become the flag of our times.


[1] The irony is that the very symbol they have taken up is actually related to a great judgement upon the world over its sinfulness.

[2] For example, many who identify as gay men or women, resent the fluidity expressed by the transgendered community. While the media presents the wider community as unified it is anything but.

[3] Here we see the intolerance of tolerance. Tolerance used to mean disagreeing with someone respectfully, but now it means accepting those of similar belief’s so long as you don’t challenge them.