If we are not mistaken there are growing numbers of unhappy Christians in our Western world. Their unhappiness is not the result of a natural awkwardness or temperamental discontentedness but of a dissatisfaction with what is being offered to them in their home churches in the name of worship and preaching. Our heart goes out to them in deep compassion. They deserve a special mention and ought to have a regular place in our prayers.

There have been so many winds of doctrine blowing through the churches over the past three decades that they may be said with justification to have reached gale-force proportions. But the problem does not end with doctrine. It extends to forms and styles of public worship. If the rumours which reach our ears are anywhere near the mark it would seem that half the churches which were once sound and evangelical have entered second childhood. Often the only qualification worshippers need to get accreditation from their leaderships is to be able to wave their arms about like the fronds of a palm tree and to be reasonably fluent at speaking gibberish. The possession of a thinking mind is a positive disadvantage since it puts those who have it in the unenviable position of realising how ludicrous the whole affair is, and how unprofitable.

Churches in a Panic⤒🔗

There must be several factors which have led once great and steadfast evan­gelical churches to decide for childish worship. One factor is the need which so many feel of catering for the young. By the 1960s and '70s it became apparent that the rising generation was becoming unchurched. The young were no longer drawn to church services by the good old habits of previous generations but were poisoned off the things of God by the popular music of their day and by the galloping influence of television and sport.

This obvious phenomenon caused many Christian leaders to agonise about their 'image' in the eyes of the young. It was no longer thought possi­ble for Christian parents to discipline their families or to keep their children unspotted from the world. The fault, so it was said, was with the church itself. It was 'old-fashioned'. It lacked 'excitement' and 'appeal'. If young persons were to be kept, new and more lively styles of worship needed to be introduced. So the argument ran.

Without doubt, this type of reasoning led to a good deal of haste and unbelief. Leaders, in many cases with good motivation and yet with secret misgivings, handed over the conduct of church services to young people. Little by little, the panic spread. Gravity and order, once held to be virtues in the worship of the Almighty, now came to be pilloried as archenemies of spiritual worship. 'Freedom' and 'spontaneity' became the new norms of worship. After all, where the Spirit is there is freedom, and why should that freedom not be available to all to make use of? Away with the shackles that bound the former generations! Worship had at last come of age. Men, women and children must all be free to participate audibly and actively.

The results are with us at this day. The fruits of a general anarchy of wor­ship are that noise replaces reverence and shallowness supplants spiritual maturity, while anything at all squeezes out the sermon. The typical worship­per, as one has said, might as well unscrew his head before the service begins because that part of his anatomy is irrelevant and might be left under the seat for all the use it is during a church service of this type.

Great Harm to True Saints←⤒🔗

Our purpose in drawing attention to these evils is to attempt to show how harmful they are to the true flock of Christ. Those who have souls to be fed and do not just come to church mindlessly can only be alarmed and offended by such superficial worship. The child of grace knows God to be glorious in holiness. He comes to the house of God with reverence and fear. He is taught by the Spirit to have a high and reverent attitude to anything and everything that belongs to God's worship. He longs for the presence of God to be felt in the heart and for the truths of Scripture to be made plain and powerful to him in his mind. When he sees other worshippers excited by frothy and foolish nonsense, whether in the worship or the preaching, he is inwardly indignant. He is hurt because he knows the Spirit of the Lord is grieved.

This, alas, is just what is happening in churches of all sorts all around us. Serious believers who would die for Christ if called on to do so are in too many cases being made to feel unwelcome in their own congregations. Their spirituality is misinterpreted for awkwardness. The most mature Christians in the church are being made to feel isolated by their fellows because they cannot praise the cheery sing-along which others seem to crave in the name of 'worship'. In this way there has come about a situation in which the service of worship is often a test of patience rather than a time of devotion for the best of God's people. They do not want to cause trouble but their grieved consciences cannot approve the novel songs, the novel choruses, the novel mimes, the novel atmosphere in the place where they and their fathers once worshipped God with holy fear.

Spirituality at Stake←⤒🔗

This is not of course a question of mere age or generation. It is much rather a matter of spirituality, of maturity and of knowledge. There are older Christians who behave like children. Thankfully, too, there are also younger Christians who have made such good use of their Bibles, books and Confes­sions of Faith as already to be well-grounded and well-studied believers.

Spiritual people come to church to meet with God. They do not want to have entertainment intruded upon them. Those who desire entertainment may obtain it at any time from the many theatres and amusement halls where it is generously provided for worldly minds. There is a place for relax­ation and for mirth of a pure and wholesome kind. God's people need to laugh at times as others do. Whilst they avoid worldly forms of amusement they do not refuse occasionally to be merry and light-hearted. But the people of God do not go to church for their entertainment. They do not seek amusement there nor do they relish finding it there. Worship and amuse­ment never go together. Worship and entertainment never go together. Worship and levity never go together.

What is at stake in all of this is that precious thing which we call spiritu­ality. The spiritual man trembles at God's Word and has a high view of every aspect of and element in God's worship. Not only does he require spir­ituality in the preaching. He requires and expects it in the reading of the Scriptures, in public prayer and in the content and tone of religious singing. He expects it in God's house and he has every right to find it there.

Spiritual Loneliness←⤒🔗

It is not difficult to see why so many of Christ's people today are lonely in the crowded gathering. They rejoice when the church is thronged with people. But they are troubled if they discover that there is nothing in the church but a noisy crowd. They are bound to wonder if perhaps after all a hundred serious worshippers — or even twenty-five — are not preferable to an irreverent multitude.

This must not be confused with a 'little flock' mentality. We do not applaud the theory that churches should always be small. On the contrary, they ought in our view to be very large. Churches of a thousand are, to our mind, not too large. We wish the land were full of them.

But numbers for numbers' sake is often treason to Christ. The leadership lowers the standard of holiness to attract the largest crowds. At a critical point in this process of dilution the worship ceases utterly to be recognisable as such by those who walk carefully with God. The crowd may grow but the spiritual and lonely Christian who witnesses the decline fears that the Spirit is withdrawn and gone. 'Ichabod' is the church's real name. Spiritual fellow­ship is almost impossible to find any more. The few really holy Christians left are isolated and lonely.

No loneliness is so hard to bear as loneliness in a crowd. How many Christians there are who feel this condition in their own churches! They are the last to speak of it because they are prayerful, patient and long-suffering. But it is no credit to their pastors and elders that this state of affairs has come about. By diluting the worship they have attracted in an uncertain multitude but they have made sad the hearts of the righteous.

Casualties of the Change←⤒🔗

There are visible casualties as a result of the kind of changes we have spoken of. One of these is the atrocious treatment occasionally meted out to faithful shepherds of the flock who refuse to change. Because they cannot in con­science go along with the general stampede to 'brighten' the worship of God, good ministers are having to leave their churches. It does not count that they have spent twenty or thirty years dutifully and faithfully opening up the Word of God to their flocks. Their crime is to be resistant to the universal cry for innovation. So our good men must go to make room for the menu of improvements insisted on by the youth leader and weak deacons.

Another and scarcely less ominous fruit of this new style of church life is the rise in our times of practical antinomianism. One shrinks from referring to it in any detail. But the fact is that new church worshippers are a lot less successful at resisting temptation than the old used to be. There may at times have been excess of severity in the older types of church service. But they were safe. They did not play about with temptation. They did not appeal to the flesh. People appeared in God's house in strictly proper dress and with consummate decorum. Alas, that cannot always be said of some more recent types of worship. A mixed multitude in God's house brings the whole level down. Every minister knows that there are too many moral casualties result­ing from this lack of the practice of holiness. It ought not to be so.

It is a comfort to God's unshepherded sheep to know that they have in heaven a Shepherd who sees their state. They must remind themselves of their true position as their Shepherd portrays it in such a passage as Ezekiel 34. They are lonely because of the ineptitude and incompetence of their leaders. They are unloved and unwanted by men because they are too spir­itual for their generation. But Christ will require from their neglectful shepherds an explanation for their neglect one day. Moreover Christ himself will take his despised and lonely people to himself, giving them his gracious presence here and his glorious presence hereafter.

What words for the lonely modern Christian to ponder are these: 'I will require my flock at their hand' (v.10); 'Behold I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out' (v.11); 'I will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day' (v.12); 'I will feed them in a good pasture; and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be' (v.14); 'Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the he-goats' (v.17); 'I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David (Christ) a prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it' (v.24)!

With such promises, who would not be lonely with Christ for a time in this world?