Tag Archives: Church

You Have to Be Different to Make a Difference

Posted on by under D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

In the church today the tendency is to look at the world all the time and to see the tragedy of the world. That is perfectly right, of course; the church is to be evangelistic. But the question is, how is the church to be evangelistic? And I contend that what the New Testament itself tells us, and what the history of the church tells us, is that the church is most successful evangelistically when she herself is as she ought to be. Why are the masses of the people outside the church? I do not hesitate to say that the reason is that they fail to see in us anything that attracts them, anything that creates within them a desire to receive what we have, or anything that rebukes them and condemns them for their way of living. Not that we should necessarily put that into words, but it should be seen.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Possibilities of the Christian Life

A Message to Churches Reaching across 75 Years

Posted on by under Miscellaneous

So long as the church pretends or assumes to preach absolute values, but actually preaches relative and secondary values, it will merely hasten the process of disintegration. We are asked to turn to the church for our enlightenment, but when we do so we find that the voice of the church is not inspired. The voice of the church today, we find, is the echo of our own voices. When we consult the church we hear only what we ourselves have said.

There is only one way out of the spiral, and the way out is the sound of a voice, not our voice, but a voice coming from something beyond ourselves, in the existence of which we cannot disbelieve. It is the duty of pastors to hear this voice, to cause us to hear it, and to tell us what it says.

Fortune Magazine, January 1940