Make the Church Attractive?

We have been told that we have to make the Church attractive to the man outside, and the idea is to become as much like him as we can.  There were certain popular padres during the first world war who mixed with their men, and smoked with them, and did this, that, and the other with them, in oder to encourage them.  Some people thought that, as a result, when the war was over, the ex-service men would be crowding into the churches.  Yet it did not happen, and it never has happened that way.  The glory of the gospel is that when the Church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it.  It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first.  That is how revival comes.  That must also be true of us as individuals.  It should not be our ambition to be as much like everybody else as we can, though we happen to be Christian, but rather to be as different from everybody who is not Christian as we can possibly be.  Our ambition should be to be like Christ, the more like Him the better, and the more like Him we become, the more we shall be unlike everybody who is not Christian.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Studies in the Sermon on the Mount,” p.37


This is something all those “seeker-sensitive” and “market-driven” pastors should pay attention to!