Gospel Preaching Doesn't Solve All Your Problems

Over the years, I have come into close contact with multiple churches whose preaching on Sundays was filled with the preacher’s opinion and pop psychology rather than the gospel. As I observed these churches, I saw a number of issues in them:

•  A lack of new believers hearing and believing the gospel coming into the church
• Membership rosters that were stagnant not only in numbers, but also in maturity
•  Debt that prohibited the church from being able to use its money in missional and gospel-centered ways
•  A fear of doing anything that could move the church forward in its mission and/or a desire cut effective ministries because of fears that the church couldn’t handle the financial burden

I had always compared these churches to the big and famous ones I would hear about—the ones whose preachers write books that get published and speak at big conferences. I assumed that where the gospel was preached faithfully, things just fell into place. The problem—one I didn’t realize until recently—is that the big and famous churches aren’t perfect. They have issues just like all the other churches, they just don’t get discussed as much in books and at conferences because there is enough good stuff happening at these churches that they can keep the conversations focused on the good stuff.

As I have thought about it more, I realized that my assumption about gospel-centered preaching fixing all the problems in a church is wrong for a number of reasons, including:

• God never promises that gospel-centered preaching will fix all the problems in a church
• The church is still made up of sinners
•  God opens people's eyes to believe and live in line with His truth, not great preachers
• Gospel preaching doesn't guarantee gospel application
•  Even the early church, under the leadership of the apostles, wasn't perfect, even though the gospel was clearly preaches to them repeatedly. Why should we be different?

As I thought about it more, I realized that gospel-centered preaching actually brings a number of problems (or ‘problems’) to a church that don’t exist when the gospel isn’t preached faithfully. These include:

• The gospel is at the root of all true heart change. People with problems are drawn to what will fix them. If we preach the gospel, people with problems will come for healing. Our churches will become populated with people with problems if we faithfully preach the gospel.
• Where the gospel is preached, people are saved. People getting saved means immature/new believers (who likely have a long way still to go in their sanctification) populating our churches—along with all their issues
• Where the gospel is preached, Satan wants the message stopped. He will fight against the proclamation of the gospel and do all he can to stop it going out. When the gospel is faithfully preached in our churches, we are inviting attacks from Satan.
• When people get saved, churches grow. Growth adds a whole new level of planning for things such as: how do we disciple new believers? How do we fit into our space on Sunday? How do we address the increased staffing needs in our church due to the growth? Where do we find more volunteers? How do we make sure our church maintains its vision and missional focus through this growth?
• Where the gospel is preached, people respond. This may mean some of the strongest leaders in the church respond to the gospel's call for them to leave our church and go somewhere else where they can have a greater impact for God's kingdom. Faithfully preaching the gospel can cause our best leaders to leave.