In case you haven’t noticed, there are some awesome old church buildings in our community.  The picture below is one I took the other day here in Salina; Help me out if you know which church it is -I took it while I was driving and didn’t have time to look at the name (don’t tell my wife).

While this building is beautiful, there are many of us who would take one look at it and call it old-fashioned, or even a dying church.  The sad thing is, here at CrossPoint Salina we can have a hip building, top-notch programs, and loud music, all the while missing the power of God.  How tragic would it be to build a community of people just to stand before our maker and say, “How innovative and cool were we God?!”

Please don’t get me wrong, there are infinite ways to express our worship of Jesus, and we live among people who think God is boring just because we portray Him so in the way we sing and relate with one another.  It is good to adapt to our culture in the way that we do church.  As Paul said himself, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22b). In other words, if we are to reach the people in our culture, we must become like them!

If I’m sounding self-contradicting, stick with me!

Problems don’t happen because we have good programs, cutting edge technology, drums, or electric guitar.  Problems happen when we attempt to build our church on these things.  They must only be a means of how we do church not the overarching goal.

Our goal as a church is to make disciples for the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth and if we are ever going to pursue this goal, we have to be a church alive by the Holy Spirit, and filled with people walking by the Holy Spirit (See Galatians 5:25).  In his book, “God’s Pursuit of Man,” A.W. Tozer confirms our great need.

I think there can be no doubt that the need above all other needs in the Church of God at this moment is the power of the Holy Spirit.  More education, better organization, finer equipment, more advanced methods–are all unavailing.  It is like bringing a better respirator after the patient is dead.  Good as these are they can never give life.

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63).  We must be a church driven by, and dependent upon the Holy Spirit.