WHEN HELL IS SCARED OUT OF PEOPLE IN CHURCH

Churches need help.  We have a lot to overcome and a lot to move toward.  Some of our labors are like the squirrel-in-the-cage activity.  Yet, darkness seems to be gaining while light is on some sort of holding pattern.

What's going on?

For certain, I wouldn't know the complete answer to any question; let alone this one.  I do note a mistake in and from my past that may give partial clue.  I'm one of those who have walked on two different roads in the same congregation.  I necessarily shifted from Bible-pounding to Bible-believing.  There is a difference.

When I operated with sermons of Bible-pounding, great threat to the hearers was issued.  Spewing and snorting Bible passages, I held hell over their heads and on occasion there would be tens--a couple of times over a hundred--responses at the end of the sermon.  Those were some of our good days, except....

...except scaring hell out of people doesn't put them any closer to heaven.

We presently have churches with the following traits:

1. The members' greatest fears are they will die and find out they are lost.
2. The members basically have no relationship with God, only to monitor faithfulness by church attendance.
3. The members develop a critical and judgmental eye for any who don't adhere to the Bible in the formation they do.
4. The attendance is in severe decline.

When hell is scared out of people in church, and that is the basic call of their belief system, this leaves one merely in neutral.  Empty and prideful, these move throughout their spiritual journey just wishing and hoping they don't do anything wrong.  And...they feel sure most others are doing many things wrong.

Ah, this was me at so many intersections of ministry operation.  I believed that I was right on everything, proud of it, and rolling my eyes at the shallowness of others whom I regarded as weak and unserious about God.

The church is not hell insurance.  Jesus is heaven assurance.  We are in need of Jesus, not so we can overlook our sins; but so that He will.  We are in need of Jesus; not because we are good enough; but because we are not.  We are in need of Jesus because he alone is Life and we are dead in our tracks without him.

The lack of hell, even if it is scared out of us, is no sign of Life.  Jesus is.  He is the only sign.