Andrew Lloyd Webber on Wifi in churches

The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has urged churches across the country to be fitted with Wi-Fi in a bid to make them a more integral part of the community.The mail reported him saying, “I want to get every church in the country on Wi-fi. Once you do that, the church becomes the centre of the community again." 

This completely misses the point of what the church is there to do and is like trying to fix a broken leg with a plaster. 

A lot of churches now use social media and other online avenues to promote events and reach out to their community. Whilst this may be effective in promoting the church, installing wi-fi is not the issue that needs to be tackled. Churches do not find themselves on the fringe of society because they do not have wi-fi. For starters, wi-fi is relatively new (past 10 years?) and church numbers have been dwindling for years.

The reason churches find themselves irrelevant in today's modern world is because they no longer preach a true account of God. This is the real issue, and until this is solved churches will always struggle on. 

It is a spiritual reason that church numbers are falling rapidly and no man-made fix, such as wi-fi can help.  

The church has left its duties as being a spiritual pillar of society, laying out God's moral objective standard to be adhered to, and has moved into becoming 'tolerant' and 'modern'. These words are not bad in themselves, but the effect of them on the state of the church are. It seems that the churches main goal today is to be "inoffensive". They talk incessantly about loving one another, however their idea of love now seems to be based upon making people happy. The church now refuses to condemn actions that it previously classed as sinful, in an attempt to be inoffensive and conclusive and hopefully to bring people through their doors. However, that is not what love is. Sometimes love is offensive. Sometimes, people do things which are not what is best for them or the greater good and it is the job of a loving, caring person to rebuke them and guide them in the right direction. 

30 years ago, when a person would go awry, the church would guide them back onto the correct path. Today, when a person goes awry the church encourages them to keep on going and waves them off. 

Proverbs 3:11-12 states "my son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction; For whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights."

Hebrews 12:7-11

7 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? 8 But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.9 Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. 11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Churches have neglected their spiritual duties in so many ways and this numbness that people feel towards 'religion' and Christianity today is a consequence of that. Churches have become powerless because they no longer preach the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness that is available to us through that.

When Paul visited Corinth he states that he claimed to know nothing but Christ crucified. If churches are ever to become an integral part of the community again then this is what they must do. They must strive to be preachers of the gospel and truth to the world and not popular with the world. The reason that Christianity is so attractive to people of the world is because it offers a way of life that is completely different to this world.

Churches today have taken the power out of the gospel and attempt to replicate the world. It offers nothing different to the futile world, therefore no wonder people no longer make the effort to get out of bed to go.

2 Timothy 3:3-4 tells us to expect this to happen in the end days.

 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

Sadly, this truth seems to be coming to pass right now. What are we to do in this instance? 2 Timothy 3 goes on to tell us what to do in verse 5: "But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry."

-BACChristian