This is the day of the placid pulpit and the comfortable pew. Today’s Christians slip around in smooth slippers, fearful of giving offense. The cry to preachers today is to water down the implications of the gospel story, lest we offend someone.  Placid being an adjective meaning; “pleasantly calm or peaceful; quiet”, such as placid lake. Although this may be desirable if you’re swimming or skiing, it is not in preaching God’s Word and his church should not tolerate it! Jesus himself said, “Think not that I came to send peace on the earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34).

The church needs members who will stand up and tell these placid preachers to proclaim the whole counsel of God, plainly, and without compromise of one single “jot” or “tittle” (cf., Matt. 5:18; Acts 20:20, 27; II Tim. 4:1-2)! The church needs members who will demand of preachers to be watchmen, to warn them of dangers and give them the call to duty without partiality (cf.,II Tim. 4:5, Ez. 3:17-21; Acts 10:34)! The church also needs preachers and elderships that will consistently challenge the church to hold strictly to God’s Word in all our practices and beliefs, so that we can truly hold forth the light of God’s Word to a lost and dying world (Phil. 2:15).

Historian Arthur Schlesinger has written, “ours is an age without heroes. . .today no one bestrides our narrow world like a colossus.” Is this true? Is this the age of the common man? Is there a famine of great men and women today?  Not so, for our Lord said, speaking of John the Baptizer, “Among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater...” (Matt. 1:11). John, a preacher faithful to God’s Word and in applying it to men where they were lost in sin. To the Jews he preached the necessity of repentance (Matt. 3:2). To the godless Pharisees and Sadducees he proclaimed “Ye offspring of vipers,who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance” (Matt. 3:7-8). Certainly not the message of a placid preacher. John was not afraid to make waves where waves needed to be made.

I recently reviewed a set of tapes by a so-called gospel preacher. After listening to these tapes where not one single scripture was referred to during the course of the discussion, I asked myself, “Could this be a gospel preacher?” What are our pulpits coming to when so-called gospel preachers can be placid with reference to God’s Word, God’s Will and God’s Way and only promote their words, their will and their way?  Have we forgotten God’s exhortation through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 55:8-9?  Have we lost confidence in the gospel’s power to save the lost? Do we think we have now, in our twentieth century intelligence, become more knowledgeable than God Almighty, our Creator? The church needs preachers, elders and deacons, men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers and Bible class teachers with a renewed desire and love for the Holy Scriptures. “Give diligence to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth. But shun profane babbling; for they will proceed further in ungodliness, and their word will eat as doeth gangrene” (II Tim. 2:15-17). Brethren, heed these words.

Rick Popejoy, CHRISTIAN WORKER, September 1989