To what? Just fill in the blank. What are we like today? What are we struggling with? What do we like? What do we believe? The world thinks that it has truly evolved to a higher level of understanding because it is now rejecting dangerous exclusive religions like Christianity in favor of ancient Eastern mysticism and Old World paganism. It thinks it’s discovering a new realm of tolerance as it moves towards accepting the Ancient Greek practice of homosexual pedophilia. Do you see the irony? We are so new and modern, and our thinking is so unique, that we’ve adopted cultural norms left in the dust some 1,400 years ago. And then as Christians, we fall into the same trap. We believe that we’re the first ones to look “outside the box” for ways to “attract” people to church. “Attractional ministry” is a new phenomenon, and we have no one to guide us as we try to navigate the pitfalls of this crazy new world we live in. Or do we?

The simple act of reading history is such a refreshing experience because it provides us help in these supposedly unique things we’re dealing with. How does it help? Do we have to read carefully between the lines to figure out what some ancient hero of the faith would have said, if he had ever faced this problem? Is it a painfully difficult exercise? Does it require us to spend hundreds of hours getting to know one dead man by reading everything he wrote and then carefully synthesizing his thoughts to determine how he would have responded in this new situation?

No. It isn’t hard. We don’t have to synthesize. In fact, all we have to do is read a couple of paragraphs that he wrote on the exact subject. “What? He couldn’t have written on this topic! It is a new phenomenon. Nobody has ever seen it before!”

Wrong. It isn’t new. It’s old. Let’s look at just one example. Eighty years ago, Lloyd-Jones had this to say about “attractional ministry”:

We seem to have a real horror of being different. Hence all our attempts and endeavours to popularize the church and make it appeal to people. We seem to be trying to tell people that their joining a church will not make them so very different after all. “We are no longer Puritans”, we say, “we believe that they over-did things and made Christianity too difficult for people. They frightened people with their strictness and their unnecessarily high standards. We are not so foolish as to do that”, we say, and indeed we do not do so. Instead, however, we provide so called “sporting parsons”, men of whom the world can say that they are “good sports”—whatever that may mean. And what it does so often mean is that they are men who believe that you can get men to come to chapel and church by playing football and other games with them. “I’ll fraternise with these men”, says such a minister. “I’ll get them to like me and to see that I’m not so different from them after all, and then they’ll come to listen to my sermons”. And he tries it, but thank God, he almost invariably fails, as he richly deserves. The man who only comes to church or chapel because he likes the minister as a man is of no value at all, and the minister who attempts to get men there by means of that subterfuge is for the time being guilty of lowering the standard of the truth which he claims to believe. For this gospel is the gospel of salvation propounded by the Son of God himself. We must not hawk it about the world, or offer special inducements and attractions, as if we were shopkeepers announcing an exceptional bargain sale…

The world expects the Christian to be different and looks to him for something different, and therein it often shows an insight into life that regular church-goers often lack. The churches organise whist-drives, fetes, dramas, bazaars, and things of that sort, so as to attract people. We are becoming almost as wily as the devil himself, but we are really very bad at it; all our attempts are hopeless failures and the world laughs at us. Now, when the world persecutes the church, she is performing her real mission, but when the world laughs at her she has lost her soul. And the world today is laughing at the church, laughing at her attempts to be nice and to make people feel at home. My friends, if you feel at home in any church without believing in Christ as your personal Saviour, then that church is no church at all, but a place of entertainment or a social club. For the truth of Christianity and the preaching of the gospel should make a church intolerable to all except those who believe, and even they should go away feeling chastened and humble.

Did we honestly think we were thinking new thoughts? Were we the first ones to hold the Puritans at arm’s length from us because we “realize” they hold no attraction for today’s man? Were we the first to try making pastors into “normal guys” who love Xbox and the NFL as much as the next guy, hoping that he would suddenly be interested in joining our church? Were we the first to stoop to tricking people into coming to a religious service? Has nobody ever been tempted to “lower the standard of truth” in order to get people in the door of his campus ministry? Is it truly unique to this day and age that we’d rather hear poetry than the proclamation of truth? Have we never before wanted the pastor to entertain us and make us feel good about ourselves because we chose the church where the pastor is well educated, a master of rhetoric, highly cultured, and “up-to-date” with current trends?

Speaking of the drop in church attendance at the time, Murray describes the response by the church:

There were those, for instance, who, critical of the plainness of congregational worship, looked for some kind of liturgy, with choir, anthem, and organ given a major role. Others, believing that people would not come to church “to be preached at”, wished to turn the sermon into an address “relevant” to the time, or into an essay replete with many allusions to authors, poets and novelists. The religious press never lacked samples of that kind of preaching, most notably taken from the leading pulpits of London. “Preaching at Whitefield’s Chapel”, The British Weekly tells us, “Dr Garvie made a strong appeal for the cultivation of public opinion on behalf of the Protocol of the League of Nations”. The Secretary of the Free Church Council, the Reverend Thomas Nightingale, visiting Westminster Chapel, took a text from Job and, says an admiring reporter, “Mr Nightingale’s quotations from Browning, Tennyson, Stevenson and Arnold showed us the poets of modern Christendom holding up, like Aaron and Hur, the hands of an ancient Moses”.

Later on, he quotes J. Hugh Edwards’ description of a style of preaching common in those days. It had a “combination of ecstatic emotion and of musical intonation which has held vast congregations absolutely spellbound with its mesmeric effect.” Apparently, Rob Bell isn’t the first one to do that. In fact, apparently, there is a word in Welsh for that type of message—the hwyl. To see that preachers were doing these things 80 years ago is to be reminded that people have always wanted pastors who will scratch their itching ears.

But to see Lloyd-Jones standing strong in the gap is to be reminded that there is hope for us. Faithful men have gone before us and fought the good fight. They have completed the race that we are still running, and now they are part of the “great cloud of witnesses.”

When we read history, we are doing what the author of Hebrews does in chapter 11. And what does it lead us to?

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin…” (Hebrews 12:1-4)