Francis Schaeffer on Faddism

Tell me what the world is saying today, and I’ll tell you

what the church will be saying in seven years.

I have often used the word, "faddism" to describe the Western Church's practice of adopting, willy-nilly, one new idea after another with the naïve conviction that each new idea will be the answer that will solve its problems and end its decline.

Francis Schaeffer died in 1984.  What a prophet! He absolutely nailed an important characteristic of Western Christianity's DNA that is more evident in 2014 than it was at the moment he drew his last  breath.

Though the issues of Schaeffer's era have faded at the ADHD pace that the church abandons one fad for another, one fad was taking shape near the end of Schaeffer's day which developed slowly into a mega fad which still continues to develop, especially in the Western Church in the U. S.  That is:

  The notion that kingdom expansion is synonymous with church planting.  The idea that Christ's Kingdom expands through the opening of new churches is now taken for granted.  The truth is, however, the New Testament never describes the planting of a church.  The New Testament passage in 1 Corinthians often cited by the planting movement speaks of Paul's planting of the message of the cross, or the gospel, in Corinth, not the planting of the church. 

  Where does the church planting idea come from?  The last decade of Schaeffer's life was the era of rapid business expansion through the opening of franchises.  Consider the explosion of national fast food chains in the last years of Schaeffer's life.

  Hence, what the business world was saying became precisely what the church began saying late in Schaeffer's time frame.

 Two more examples, in 2014, of this phenomenon:

1. The smothering avalanche of church programs, seminars and workshops on leadership.
     The words leader and leadership are virtually absent from the New Testament, while calls to serve and to being a servant, even a slave, infest the New Testament.  Where does today's focus on leadership come from?  Neither from the teachings of Jesus and the apostles nor the way of living together Jesus and the early disciples modeled.
     Rather, interest in leadership comes, as Schaeffer suggests, from what the world has been saying.
2. The fervid passion attached to training coaches and forming coaching networks.
     While the athletics metaphor is present in the New Testament, the focus is on the athlete and the competition, not the coach.  Jesus didn't incarnate Himself in the world as a Life Coach.
     Why is coaching so much the rage in the Western Church today?
     This fad comes from the very source Francis Schaeffer identified: The world.  Not from the Lord.

So, preach it, Frankie!  From the grave. 

May we be cut to the heart just as thousands were on that day of Pentecost when the Spirit filled the first followers of the Way.

We must repent.