A Short-Term Church, A Short-Term World

There is an investment firm that advertises to the effect that sound investment planning is not dependent on news headlines. The message is that this firm will develop a long-term plan for its clients that will achieve the clients’ financial goals over a lifetime.

When I hear this ad on the radio I often think of how much preaching is dependent on news headlines, how much theology is derived from current events and trends rather than the Bible, and how this teaches professing Christians to think and live short-term. I also think about the fact that in business I constantly battle short-term thinking rather than work with others who value strategic long-term planning and practice.

Most preaching and teaching and writing on eschatology I’ve encountered over the past fifty-plus years has been dependent on headlines, many authors and preachers apparently see no problem in constantly adjusting their emphasis and message to fit current events – we are more addicted to news rather than focused on the Good News.

In business often everything is about relieving short-term pressure rather than working through challenges within a strategic framework – so the wheel is reinvented month after month, if not sometimes week after week.

On the political scene not only do politicians change their minds by endorsing candidates with whom they previously had, if they are to be believed, irreconcilable differences – but sadly many who are considered “leaders” in the professing church also endorse candidates with rationales and platitudes that bear no relationship to Biblical thinking.

Only Biblical thinking in Jesus Christ can preserve the church through this insanity, but we can’t have Biblical thinking if we don’t know the Bible – and yet, because of our short-term mentality we argue against that truth – we think we can think Biblically without reading and learning the Bible, without being obedient to the Bible as the Word of God in Christ Jesus. How can this be?