In this video, Dr. W. Robert Godfrey offers encouragement to those who are discouraged by the state of the church.
When I talk to people who are discouraged by the state of the church, the first thing I want to say to them is, “You’re insightful.” The church generally has a huge number of problems and so to be discouraged as you see problems in the church really should not surprise us in the day in which we live.
I think sometimes people who are discouraged are somewhat older and I can speak for the older folks among us when we feel as if the church in America that once seems strong, a central institution, a rather united front in many ways, that church has changed so much, has lost so much influence, is no longer, it seems so united. So sometimes it’s reflecting a discouragement with changes in our culture as well as changes in our churches.
The other thing I’ve been more and more persuaded of as time has gone on in particularly in recent years is that I think Jesus is deliberately making our churches weak so that we become more dependent on Him. I think there was a temptation in America to depend on ourselves, to depend on the money we had in churches, to depend on the education that our ministers had received, to depend on the influence ministers had in the towns in which they lived. And there may be something positive about Christians having to say: “We don’t have that influence. We don’t have that wealth. We don’t have that position in society.” And the upside of that is I think Jesus is saying, “No, you should depend on Me, not only all these other external things.” That’s hard. It can be discouraging. It’s not that we don’t want to have some evidences of success, some influence in society, but I think we can rejoice that Jesus remains the head of the church.
Jesus continues to be the builder of the church and that we can depend on Him to do all things well. And whether we see coming days of greater visible success for the church or even further weakness for the church, we can trust Him and we should continue to look for churches that are seeking faithfully to abide by His Word.