Church Growth Movement and the Bondage of the Will

Fairly recently on Issues Etc, Todd Wilken discussed with Burnell Eckardt the topic of the Church Growth Movement/contemporary worship basically assuming a view which is Arminian, that is to say, it posits free will.   I've long thought this and this is very troubling as it runs entirely counter to Luther's Bondage of the Will (De servo arbitrio) against Erasmus, not to mention, very simply, the Third Article of the Creed in the Catechism, and the principles of salvation being entirely by grace alone and faith alone through Christ alone.   This becomes, as I've said before, "evangelism at the expense of the evangel (Gospel)."

While the Word of God is rejectable, as Christ suffers it to be (see the parable of the sower, for example) the power to believe, conversion as we say, is completely in the Holy Spirit's working in the Word of the Gospel.  We cannot improve upon the means of grace.  (Shocking!)   All the schooling on leadership, experiential engineering of worship, having 2 or 3 flavors of services in most LCMS churches these days, flies in the face of clear Lutheran reformation theology, the Lutheran Confessions, and simply being able to say that our salvation is completed rested in Christ alone.

Sadly so many times churches will engage in "evangelism" or "stewardship" programs or emphases merely out of fretting about money.   George Barna is consulted, a sermon series concocted, and special meetings are held.  Faith flies out the window.   How many times did Israel as a people run to their own solutions when confronted with challeges, only to be rebuked by the LORD in His call for them to repent and return to Him and receive His mercy.   We do this over and over again in the name of effective ministry, successful outreach, church growth, and kingdom building.

Sadly while we claim not to buy into rapture theology, we think that we ought to be raptured, by methodistic machinations, from suffering for our confession of faith.  We have, as Sasse pointed out elsewhere, a superstitious belief in dialogue.  Lutheranism is most certainly a stranger in our North American landscape and we go running after S.S. Schmucker redivivus only to find that we sink again and again on the S.S. Schmucker and find that we are no longer Lutheran and in the process to save ourselves we lost what we hoped to save in the name of the institution.

This is why justification by grace through faith is indeed the article by which the church stands or falls.   It is the case in liturgy, outreach, stewardship, church organization, and for us as individual congregations.   We who are free keep putting ourselves into bondage while we fall into the lie that the world we seek to proclaim Christ to is free and may simply "choose Christ" with the right marketing and enginnering of worship experiences.