I’ve written in the past why I’m not a big of Easter giveaways, or really much that comes out of an attractional model of doing church. Simply put, I don’t believe it produces what it wants to. You aren’t going to get self-denying followers of Jesus when the “bait” you used to hook them was an appeal to selfishness.
Here is another reason why I believe things like Easter giveaways and promoting dynamic speakers or worship leaders or anything of the sort is counter-productive to the gospel. I’ll illustrate this with an imaginary experiment.
Imagine with me that I’m going to do an experiment with a couple of plants. I want to prove my theory that plants which listen to country music die at a much faster rate than those that listen to classic rock. So I set the plants…plant A the country music plant and plant B the classic rock one. I set them up in a different window to make sure they get plenty of light. Plant A I put in a window which gets about 30 minutes of light per day, and plant B gets about 6 hours of good sunlight. I also put some soil in there. For plant A I put it in a nice little soil that I created with a few rocks and also a couple different seeds from various plants. Plant B I get some fertilizer and good potting soil from True Value. I also make sure to do my watering every morning—I don’t want to be unfair. So every morning I give plant A it’s drink of some Round-up plant killer. And plant B I give a healthy dose of water. And now for the finishing touches, I turn on the radio for plant A and have it only listen to country music. For plant B I set up a play list of classic rock.
At the end of 3 weeks my theory is confirmed and the plant listening to only country music is already dead while the one listening to classic rock is doing well and thriving. Thus proving my theory that classic rock is better for plants—and for your soul—than country music.
You aren’t convinced by my experiment are you? And that is because I have way too many variables. A good science experiment requires me to have only one variable—in this case, the music. If you have too many variables you cannot prove that what really caused the plant death or growth was the music.
It’s the same way with the gospel. If you have a faithful but relatively dull speaker who has zero converts compared to a dynamic speaker who gets 300 decisions, can you really say it was the gospel which did the work?
This is what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. Corinth was a culture which was prone to chase after teachers of rhetoric. Remember that story in Scripture when pagans wanted to worship him as a god because of his fine speaking skills? Paul could bring it. But Paul didn’t want a host of variables when he came to Corinth. This is why he came not with a bunch of things but he came only preaching the gospel—the offensive, Christ and Him crucified gospel.
Why does Paul do this? Because he didn’t want anyone to be able to say, “Dude, let’s be honest, people responded because you put together such a riveting talk. That’s why they were excited.”
The more we move away from simple gospel proclamation and simple gospel methodology the more variables we are putting into the equation. And the more we do this the more we are robbing God of His glory and the display of His power. If it takes giving away a car to get people in your church then you can’t credit this with the power of God. Even if once they get in there “God really works” and people make decisions. How can a skeptic not treat this as just someone responding to the gifts you’ve given them? Slipping the gospel in the backdoor isn’t just dishonest, it’s detracting.
Why not love people and preach a simple gospel. Wouldn’t it be better for folks to be scratching their heads wondering how “you did it”? If you can put bottle it, put it in a book and sell it, then I’m really not sure how we can credit the power of God and not human ingenuity.
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