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.

A recent Church of England Synod, UK (the flagship of the worldwide Anglican communion), debated whether to bless same sex unions. Advocates said this was not a change to church doctrine, which upholds marriage as between a man and a woman. Many evangelical/conservative/traditional Anglicans raised an alarm, including a lay leader by the name of Benjamin John (who also works for the UK Christian legal ministry Christian Concern). His short speech is a brilliant example of Peter and John boldness we’ve been reading about in Acts:

Subsequently the Synod tragically, though not astonishingly, voted in favour of blessing same-sex unions. There has been Anglican drift for decades. They have exchanged orthodoxy for cultural compromise. Numerous Anglican bloggers and Youtubers have expressed their grave concern. Many individuals and congregations will leave, some joining groups like the Free Anglican Church (The Anglican Network was similarly formed in Canada out of the Anglican Church in Canada). The worldwide Anglican communion, which has given Christianity so much good, is fracturing along biblical lines. Those who naively and foolishly remain will, almost inevitably, drift toward further compromise. As one Anglican commentator put it, you can’t say you’re a vegan and eat sausages. You cannot say church teaching is that marriage is heterosexual and bless same-sex unions. The Lord is patient with the bride He is sanctifying but when it so openly apostatizes (departs from the faith), well, He denies those who deny Him (2 Ti 2:12b). Church history is full of such examples.

Ichabod- Hebrew for the glory of the Lord has departed (1 Sam 4:22).
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May the faithful take heed and remain true to the Lord in faith and practice.

“His [Jesus’] winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Mt 3:12; c.f. Lk 3:17)

When I was younger I worked for an organic farmer for several years who still used many traditional Ontario farming practices, including the fanning mill. Taking grain from the grainery of the old hip roof barn I insert pails of raw grain directly into the mill. A combination of the fanning and shaking would separate the chaff from the grain. The chaff was good for, well, nothing; and the grain, free from defect or blemish, would be used to plant in the fields. This Victorian invention mechanized the age old practice that Jesus describes in our verse, whereby the grain was threshed (beaten to loosen the grain) and then winnowed by tossing the grain-husk-stem mix into the air. The breeze would carry away the unwanted materials and the grain would fall to the threshing floor to be collected, used or consumed. The chaff would be burned.

Now this verse has an eschatological edge to it (end times), however, there is a sense in which it has more universal application today: the Lord is often busy about winnowing the visible Church, separating real and nominal Christians, the former to His glory and the latter to their derision.

As we’ve been seeing in C2C, at certain times in history seismic events overturn established orders and reveal the true state of things, human hearts.
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For many years the wheat and chaff in the visible church have been allowed to remain together in Ontario churches. Many people looked like respectable Christians, that is until the winnowing fork was set to them, the pressure produced by recent seismic shifts and events that revealed on what side of the line they really stood:

• Post-modern denial of truth: did God really say?
• Rampant materialism: will I serve Christ or mammon?
• Rampant narcissism: is it all about me or loving God & neighbour?
• Rise of neo-liberalism: do group rights trump individual freedom?
• Gender and Sexuality: will I stand for what is right or compromise?
• Covid-19: Do I value worship and fellowship, or do I use Covid as an excuse not to participate in the local church (or open the church altogether!)​

Compromise, Complacency or Christ?

We are living in changing times and the pressures of these changes are highly revelatory as to the hearts of visible Christians. This is burdensome, yet there is hope, hope that the church, purged, pruned and winnowed may be the faithful remnant that will then shine forth all the brighter in the darkness.

The crowd, the media, pressures people to abandoned independent thought, and through fear, make them conform to their program. That is what lies behind virtue signalling.

Virtue signalling, a buzz word these days, is when you go along with the flow, not believing it to be true, but accepting or giving lip service to it, so that you do not face its wrath or intimidation.

But this is so very dangerous, to go along with something you don’t believe in simply out of the fear of public reprisal. This is how Nazi Germany developed, with too many Germans fearing taking a stand and so becoming virtue signallers for the safety of their families, economic benefit or continued social standing.  

An old county song I recall from my youth had this poignant line, “you’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.”

Biblically, that something ought to be what God has said is true. In grace, we need to pray that as Christians we would have the boldness to speak the truth; that He would give us the courage to stand with the Lord in faith and not go along with the world in fear.

So many men of women of the faith from the Bible and history come to mind when I think of this, however, one verse strikes me, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” (1 Cor 16:13)
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May we be radiant signals pointing people away from the world and to Christ!